Page:EB1922 - Volume 30.djvu/979

Rh EASTMAN, GEORGE (1854- ), American inventor and philanthropist, was born at Waterville, N.Y., July 12 1854. He was educated at Rochester and early became interested in photography. In 1880 he began to manufacture dry plates and four years later produced the first practicable roll film. In 1888 he invented the "kodak." In 1900 he gave $250,000 to the Rochester Mechanics' Institute. He has given laboratories to the university of Rochester and has donated $500,000 toward that university's endowment. To its school of music he has given $3,500,000 and to its medical school $4,000,000 (1920). In 1920 it became known that he had given at various times large sums to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, amounting to $11,000,000.

EBERT, FRIEDRICH (1871- ), first president of the Reich or German Federated Republic, was born Feb. 4 1871 at Heidelberg, where he attended the national elementary school and then learned the trade of a saddler; after he had become a journeyman he migrated, according to the German custom, from place to place in Germany, seeing the country and learning fresh details of his work until he finally settled at Bremen. There he became interested in the agitation of the Social Democratic party, obtained in 1893 an editorial post on the Socialist Bremer Volksieitung and in 1900 was appointed a trade-union secretary and ultimately elected a member of the Bremen Bttrgerschaft (comitia of citizens) as representative of the Social Democratic party; in 1905 he was elected to the presiding board of his party and was returned as a deputy to the Reichstag in 1912. In 1913 he was chosen as successor to Bebel to preside over the whole Social Democratic party. Dur- ing the World War he endeavoured by negotiations with the Dutch and Swedish Social Democrats to prepare the way for united action by all the Socialists in the belligerent countries. He took part in 1917 in the Stockholm conference, which, how- ever, had no practical result. He likewise endeavoured without success to bring about a German understanding with Russia. After the revolution he was one of the six commissaries of the people who formed the first provisional Government, in which he shared the presidency with the Independent Socialist Haase. His influence among the commissaries became predominant, and he rendered eminent services in conjunction with the Socialist War Minister, Noske, and the Socialist leader, Scheidemann, in the restoration of tranquillity and orderly administration. He was a keen opponent of all varieties of the Spartacist, Com- munist or Bolshevist movements, and bore a leading part in the suppression of the Spartacist insurrections. He was elected president of the Reich by the National Assembly at Weimar on Nov. 12 1919. (C. K.*) EBNER-ESCHENBACH, MARIE, FREIFRAU VON (1830- 1916), Austrian novelist (see 8.843), died in 1916. (See also AUSTRIAN EMPIRE: Literature.)

ECHEGARAY, JOSE (1833-1916), Spanish author and playwright (see 8.870), died at Madrid Sept. 16 1916. Together with Frederic Mistral, he was awarded the Nobel prize in 1904. ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY (see 8.896). During 1910-21 the value of economic entomology as an essential part of applied science had been definitely realized throughout the civilized world (for MEDICAL ENTOMOLOGY, i.e. insects in human disease, see, under that heading, a separate discussion as an independent science). In the United States alone had the conditions of agri- culture and horticulture previously been such that the farmers and fruit-growers were compelled to deal with their pests if they were to obtain crops at all; and economic entomology was then developed in America to an extent unknown elsewhere. But this limitation is no longer in effect, and the factors that have combined to bring entomology to its proper place in the sciences that underlie the practice of agriculture and horticul- ture are simple and clear. So far as relates to the older coun- tries, with an established and ordered system of crop-growing, whose stability and perseverance make in themselves for the minimum of insect prevalence, the comparatively small losses due to pests have now become important owing to the keener competition in crop production, the lowering of values and the

greater care that has to be exercised to make a profit; when agriculture flourished the margin of loss due to pests could be neglected; but this had often approximated, in the last ten years before the World War, so closely to the actual profit that the losses, small though they might be, had of necessity to be checked. In the tropics, the opening up to cultivation of increasing areas in cotton, tea, sugar, coffee, palms, citrus and specially rubber has brought in its train insects which may entirely inhibit the successful cultivation of the crop if they are not dealt with.

The decade 1910-20 was one of extraordinary developments in the trials of new crops in fresh areas, and it is one of the cardinal principles of modern entomology, as explained below, that the introduction of new crops to new areas stimulates the outburst of immense insect epidemics; the British Dominions and colonies have followed the lead of Cape Colony and the West Indies, and have found the entomologist a necessary officer on the staff of the agricultural department. The first entomologist appointed from the United Kingdom to such work took up his duties at the close of 1899; now a number leave England yearly to replace the vacancies or to fill new posts in the agricultural departments of the Dominions and the colonies of the Empire. A third factor, and one that will increase in importance, has been the immensely increased facilities for the rapid transport of plants and pests from one country to another, and also the increased desire to obtain the new varieties of tropical crops produced by the economic botanists of the topical agricultural stations. Formerly the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, were the British centre of plant distribution, and while Kew was the home of many introduced scale insects, few pests were distributed apart from these; but the new varieties of cane from Java and the West Indies, the cottpn seed from Egypt, Cambodia, Australia, the mango seed from the East, the rubber plants that circulated over the tropics, the count- less shipments of tropical plants, have been the means of intro- ducing pests to new countries, where, freed from the control of nature by means of natural enemies, they have bred and multi- plied to their full extent and so constituted a very serious menace to cultivation. Experience has also shown that the new applied entomology is as practical a science as any other upon which the practice of agriculture depends. This was not always the case, and the amateur entomologist, whose interests were primarily confined to collections and nomenclature, did not impress the practical farmer as able to help him in his fight against enemies; this phase (from Great Britain and India notably) has not wholly passed, but it has so largely given place to the practical entomologist whose object is to eliminate the pest and thereby also the loss, that the entomologist is now recognized as necessary. A final factor is the growing recognition of the value of " team work, " that is, of the cooperation of the plant breeder, plant physiologist, mycologist, bacteriologist, and "soil condition" expert, in tackling problems of plant hygiene, and their demand for the collaboration also of the entomologist able to deal with that aspect of the problem. Many insect problems are cases solely of gross damage by feeding insects; but many are tangled up with other disease phenomena, and in many cases an insect is the transmitter from plant to plant of virulent disease organisms. It will be evident that the older type of entomologist, whose interest in the insect ended with its classification and the enumeration of the synonyms under which it was known in the literature, must be replaced by the more widely trained man capable of collaborating in these complicated problems.

Training. In 1900 there were few facilities for training outside of the colleges and experiment stations of the United States, and the entomologist selected for responsible work in the colonies was required to have taken a degree in zoology and to have an amateur knowledge of entomology as then understood. Even in 1910, the English universities provided no better training, and the groundwork of a very thorough education in comparative anatomy and zoology was regarded as the one essential upon which could be laid a small amount of