WAR ON INSECTS.

Waikato Times, Volume 104, Issue 17485, 20 August 1928, Page 9

WAR ON INSECTS.

RAVAGES IN AMERICA. GOST £400,000,000 A YEAR. The ravages of insects, estimated at over £400,u00,000 annually in tlie United States alone, are being studied comprehensively by world scientists at the fourth international congress of entomology meeting at Cornell University. Leading entomologists of the world, including over 100 foreign delegates, have registered. The gathering has brought an alumnus of Cornell University, Dr. L. O. Howard, senior entomologist of the Department of Agriculture. When asked to comment on the importance of the congress and the work being done by entomologists, Dr. Howard said:

“Few people realise the critical situation which exists at the present time. Men and nations have always struggled among themselves. War has seemed to be a necessity growing out of the ambition of the human race. But there is a war between ail humanity and certain forces that are arrayed against it, the bacteria and protozoa that carry disease and tlie enormous forces of injurious inseots which attack us from every point and which constitute to-day our greatest rivals in the control of nature. ' “We have ignored these creatures to a certain extent on account of their small size, but their size is one of the great elements of danger, one of the great elements of success in existence and (multiplication.

“Let all the departments of biology in ail our universities and colleges begin a concerted movement to train the men needed in this defensive and offensive campaign."