Kovács I. Endre szerk.: Rovartani Közlemények (Folia Entomologica Hungarica 16/22-30. Budapest, 1963)

only an ephemeral remedy, never caring for fundamental, farreaching investigations. And without painstaking soil-biological researches for several years there ia no hope to avert danger, and the immense sums squandered on immediate help get largely and uselessly lost. The scholar versed in ecology cannot but have the depressing thought that a fraction of these sums,spent so aimlessly on futile defense, would be enough to lay the scientific foundations of successful methods. Ladies and Gentlemen! I am perhaps looking too much afar when, discussing the importance of the investigation of biocoenoses, I also allude to projecté and problems which lead us to maybe other centuries or alien continents. And I still have the feeling that I am right in doing ao. The work and life of a research worker is similar to those of the captain of a seafaring ship. When the commander seta the course of his vessel, he not only leads lier safely through the shoals and cliffs in her immediate vicinity, but also, and constantly, has his eye on the horizon, calculating by his instruments the exact position of the next port, - harbours which are still under the horiaon, to be sighted only tomorrow or the next day. And as every seaman knows the insatiable desire after the unknown, just so the scientist is forever yearning for new scientific discoveries. The present anniversary demonstrates how much and how little this fifty years is. We of fuller years feel that the night is coming on, - on, before our ship could sail these new waters. But still we turn untroubled eyes toward the distant horizon, because we know that, in the next fifty years, the young and the strong will arrive where we could not. This is the knowledge which gives us strength to look, after the successes of the past fifty years, confidently forward to the next fifty!