Such digests may or may not be intelligently made, and, even under the most favorable circumstances, will hardly serve any other purpose than helping to the reference to the original articles, and this could undoubtedly be done more satisfactorily to the stations and to the people at large by general and classified indices to all the State documents, made as full as possible and issued at stated intervals.  Only a small proportion of the bulletins have been so far noticed by digest in this record, with no particular rule, so far as I can see, in the selection.  In point of fact, those will be most apt to be noticed whose authors can find time to themselves send or make for the purpose their own abstracts.  This is, perhaps, inevitable under present arrangements.  Complete and satisfactory digests of all, if intelligent and critical, imply a far greater force than is at present at Prof.  Atwater’s command.

Under these circumstances, it would seem wiser to devote all the energies of the bureau to digests of the similar literature of other countries, which would be of immense advantage to our people and to the different station workers.  Judging from the recommendations and resolutions of the general association, this is the view very generally held, but except in chemistry and special industries like that of beet sugar, very little of that kind of work has yet been attempted.

What is true of the station publications in general is equally true of special publications.  As entomologist of the department, I have been urged to bring together, at stated intervals, digests of the entomological publications of the different stations.  Such digests to be of any value, however, should also be critical, and it were a thankless task for any one to be critic or censor even of that which needs correction or criticism.  Moreover, to do this work intelligently would require increase of the divisional force, which at present is more advantageously employed, for, as already intimated, I should have great doubts of the utility of these digests.

I believe, however, that the division should strive for such increase of means as would justify the periodic publication, either independently or as a part of the department record, of general and classified indices to the entomological matter of the station bulletins, and should work more and more toward giving results from other parts of the world.  This could, perhaps, best be done by titles of subject and of author so spaced and printed on stout paper that they could be cut and used in the ordinary card catalogue.  The recipient could cut and systematically place the titles as fast as received.