PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
PERC.O. 885
20 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
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lurks in railway carriages and public places, and there is no escaping the ubiquitous disease-carrying insect; if it is bad for Europeans, it is worse for natives; since plague recommenced in India, in 1896, seven millions of people have died, people living in small houses, with little idea of sanitation, with small means, and no What precautions can power of understanding what plague was or how it came.
they take against fleas, or how can they leave their homes and their work if rats It is the same with malaria; in a bad season, as in the begin to die round them? Punjab in 1908, and Behar in 1909, the mortality in the villages from malaria was truly awful. The mosquitoes can get to them and bite them; the one man who starts the infection may be the means of infecting scores of others, and so long as the I wish I could paint a real mosquitoes last the epidemic continues unchecked. picture of what these insect-borne diseases mean in the tropics and of the wastage of life they entail; when it is realised, one realises also the part the entomologist must come to play in the future, and the absolute necessity, if the tropics are to be opened up and cultivated, of this special kind of preventive entomology heing adequately developed. If we are ever to colonise the tropics, if we are to people them with healthy races, to develope them agriculturally, and to render available the immense amount of raw material they are capable of producing for England's manufactures and trade, it will be only when we have organised the entomology and successfully A great deal has been done, especially on tackled the insect transmitters of disease. the medical side; the advances in tropical medicine of the last twenty years mark an epoch, but we are behind in our entomological organisation, and we want to take
ne matter more in earnest.
In England, if mosquitoes and sandflies do not bite, there are dangers of an equally serious nature from the house flies and flesh flies, which carry the typhoid germ Flies which settle on food may carry and do carry germs on their feet and on their proboscis; the common fly should be vigorously exterminated and kept down, and in this respect there is very much to be done in this country.
What Nor is it only the very vital demands of the present we have to look to. does the future hold for us in this respect? Sleeping sickness has come into great prominence in the last few years, mainly because the areas in which the Glossina flies occur have been opened up and the disease has now affected persons not immune to it who were formerly not in reach of the infection; the opening up has increased the range of the disease. What is going to happen in the future as the tropics are Are we opened up and rapid communication established to fresh tropical areas? going to get more and more diseases communicated by insects, now confined to tropical jungles, but brought within our range by increasing means of communica- tion? Is the yellow fever going to reach Indo-China and India, for instance, by means of infected mosquitoes carried by ships from the Panama Canal when that is opened? The yellow fever mosquito is already in India, but not the germ, and Is the sleeping while a yellow fever patient cannot carry it a mosquito might. sickness transmitter going to spread ? Is plague going to establish itself in Europe These speculations are quite and carry off thousands and millions in England? justified on the analogy of sleeping sickness alone, and it is essential to make sure that our entomology is up to the standard of our medicine, and when the time comes that we shall be ready to tackle the insect that transmits the disease.
I may seem to have overdrawn the picture of the importance of the insect world, but, truly, anyone who has lived in the tropics will know that I have not exaggerated. From the medical and sanitary point of view the entomologist is going to be very important. and in the last few decades the agricultural entomologist has already found his place.
In the old days, the profits on tropical agriculture were very large and the losses were inappreciable: but that is so no longer. Larger areas are under sugar, tea, coffee, cocoa, and other products; the yields of wheat on virgin soils are no longer obtained, and the farmer all the world over has found he must look to the small percentage he loses to insect pests as representing a great part of his profits.
He can neglect it no longer, and when he wants help it is to the official entomologist he must turn.
If we are to be ready it will be only if entomology in the British Empire is In all branches of organised and developed in a better way than it is at present. applied entomology, our chief need is trained workers, and it is a curious fact that though there are in the Empire more than thirty working economic entomologists, there is not in England any institution which trains economic entomologists or which Our Colonies recruit their gives a complete course of instruction in entomology. entomologists from America or take untrained men who get their training from
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experience, which is an expensive way. We should be able to recruit our men from England, as we do with all other branches of science, and it should be here in England that the training in entomology which must be acquired before any prac- tical work is possible should be available. It is the object of the course which this lecture inaugurates to make a beginning with this training, and to try to do for England and the Empire what similar institutions have already been doing for It is the function of the Imperial College years in America and other countries.
of Science and Technology to supply the highest technical instruction in science, and it is fitting that such an institution should provide training in a subject of such importance.
England has recently sent three students to America to be trained in economic entomology, through the generosity of Mr. Andrew Carnegie; but surely, seeing that our Empire has economic entomologists, and that our entomologists cope with as large problems as do the American Department, we should be able to provide the scientific training here in England and give our workers the special instruction required for coping with these problems in the tropical areas of the Empire. Work as good as any in America is being done in our Colonies and tropical possessions; we want a great deal before this work will be properly organised and carried on; we want larger means, more men, less overworking; we want to differentiate research from executive work, and not expect the same man to do research, teaching, executive work, and the administration of pest Acts; we want to develop a class of what we may call executive entomologists for organising and carrying on campaigns; we want co-operation between different parts of the Empire, between England and the Colonies; but our greatest need at present is a training institution, a source of supply of young men properly trained in entomology and specially selected for the We must continue to peculiar qualifications required in the economic entomologist. depend upon America or to trust to luck unless we have this, and it is our hope that we can provide such a course and that the scientific training can be given here. England is not behind in other branches of entomology, and in the Colonies the work of practical applied entomology is as highly developed, considering the available resources, as it is in America; but we want to develop it in England, to organise the work, to provide a thorough course of training, and so he able to provide for England and the Colonies the trained men that are wanted now and that will still more be wanted in the near future.
2643
SIR,
No. 78.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE to THE GOVERNORS OF CERTAIN COLONIES, &c.*
(Miscellaneous.)
"1
Downing Street, 22 March, 1911.
of the 24th of August, WITH reference to my despatch, "Miscellaneous 1910,† I have the honour to transmit to you the accompanying papers showing the nature of the work which is being carried on by the African Entomological Research Committee.
2. Up to the present time the Committee has co-operated mainly with the British Colonies and Protectorates in Tropical Africa, but it appears to me that if this co-operation were extended to some of the Crown Colonies outside Africa it might be of mutual advantage both to those Colonies and the Committee.
3. I am aware that the conditions of the Colony under your administration are different from those of the African Colonies and Protectorates and that the system which has been set on foot in the latter case may be quite unsuitable in the former, but I should be glad if you would consider whether co-operation with the Committee is desirable, and, if so, what would be the best means of effecting it.
I have, &c.,
L. HARCOURT.
Le., Barbados, British Guiana, British Honduras, Jamaica, Leeward Islands, Trinidad, Windward Islands, Ceylon, Federated Malay States, Straits Settlements, Fiji.
↑ Not printed.
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