Capers With Carroll

I need to introduce Bruce to the members of the class. When Solomon and I were in Kunming, I wanted to visit the Research Institute for Insect Resources. I had found an address on the web, but the Institute had moved, so it took us a few days to locate it. It is attached to the Forestry University. We arrived on a Saturday, and walking around in a big empty building, we found Bruce, who is a graduate student at RIIR. Bruce was very kind to us. Here he is showing me pictures of his work with Chinese gall-nuts, something I had read about, but never seen. Later, he introduced me to Dr. Chen, the director of the institute. We went back a second day and Bruce gave us a tour of a green house where I saw live gall-nuts and lac insects. I have been an amateur entomologist for 30 years, but this was one of the best entomology weekends of my whole life. One of the interesting things about RIIR is that most professional entomologists spend most of their time working on how to keep insects from causing economic problems for people. RIIR is working to find ways that insects can produce valuable products for people. Bruce and I have kept in touch, and he is also interested in improving his English, so he will fit in very well in this blog community.