Every other subject that might be considered on this occasion must be subordinate to the one great question of co-operation.  With the large increase of actual workers in our favorite field, distributed all over the country, the necessity for some co-operation and co-ordination must be apparent to every one.  Just how this should be brought about or in what direction we may work toward it, will be for this association in its deliberations to decide.  Nor will I venture to anticipate the deliberations and conclusions of the special committee appointed to take the matter into consideration, beyond the statement that there are many directions in which we can adopt plans for mutual benefit.  Take, for instance, the introduction and dissemination of parasites.  How much greater will be the chance of success in any particular case if we have all the different station entomologists interested in some specific plan to be carried out in co-operation with the national department, which ought to have better facilities of introducing specimens to foreign countries or to different sections of our own country than any of the State stations.

Let us suppose that the fruit growers of one section of the country, comprising several States in area, need the benefit in their warfare against any particularly injurious insect of such natural enemy or enemies as are known to help the fruit growers of some other section.  There will certainly be much greater chances of success in the carrying out of any scheme of introduction if all the workers in the one section may be called upon through some central or national body to help in the introduction and disposition of the desired material into the other section.  Or, take the case of the boll worm investigation already alluded to.  The chances of success would be much greater if the entomologists in all the States interested were to give some attention to such lepidopterous larvae as are found to be affected with contagious diseases and to follow out some specific plan of cultivating and transmitting them to the party or parties with whom the actual trials are intrusted.  The argument applies with still greater force to any international efforts.  I need hardly multiply instances.  There is, it is true, nothing to prevent any individual station entomologist from requesting co-operation of the other stations, nor is there anything to prevent the national department from doing likewise; but in all organization results are more apt to flow from the power to direct rather than from mere liberty to request or to plead.  The station entomologist may be engrossed in some line of research which he deems of more importance to the people of his State, and may resent being called upon to divert his energies; and with no central or national power to decide upon plans of co-operation for the common weal, we are left to voluntary methods, mutually devised, and it is here that this association can, it seems to me, most fully justify its organization.  And this brings me to the question of