INSECTS AND ENTOMOLOGISTS 



211 



tions; the man who uses all his leisure in scouring woods and fields, 

 swamps and running waters, for its wealth of insect life; who works 

 in good weather and bad, for whom the woods at night hold no terrors 

 when in pursuit of specimens? What about the collector? Of a 

 surety he is entitled to rank among the elect, for without him the 

 systematist would have little to work with and the student of insect 

 ecology but a poor basis for his branch of the science. It is the col- 

 lector who in the past has formed the body of all our entomological 

 societies, and now forms the working majority of most of them. It 

 is the collector upon whom the science rests as a foundation and he 

 is entitled to rank by himself, although aside from this he may and 

 often does belong to one of the other divisions as well. 



Now, dropping the entomologist for the moment, let us consider 

 the insects themselves, and here we find their influence extending in 

 every direction; sometimes to our benefit, more often to our injury. 

 Those that affect us injuriously we are able to subdivide into those 

 that attack us directly either as parasites or merely as a source of food 

 supply, and those that prey upon our crops, supplies or farm stock. 

 And even the list of directly injurious forms is not a small one for, to 

 begin with, there are no less than three species of sucking lice that 

 attack the human animal and are confined to 

 him, favoring his head, and other hairy regions, 

 and his clothing when he wears any. It is an 

 interesting matter for reflection that the egg- 

 laying habit of the body-louse is an adaptation 

 that must have required ages to develop and that 

 could not even begin to develop until man wore 

 clothing of some kind. 



And wherever man goes wholly or partly 



unclothed, he shares with other animals the dan- ™ „ 



Fig. 1. A head louse. 



ger of becoming infested with creatures like bots, 

 screw worms and other dipterous maggots, or penetrating insects like 

 jigger fleas and their allies. Man, then, stands in the relation of host 

 to a not inconsiderable number of insects species, only a few of which, 

 however, are really dependent upon him. 



But as prey, his usefulness to insects is infinitely greater. In his 

 home a variety of bloodsuckers have established themselves ; even in 

 his bed they may be found, and they range from the reasonably sized 

 creatures found in the temperate regions to the infinitely more formi- 

 dable creatures found in the tropical countries, where the bites often 

 produce unpleasant and even dangerous results. 



Where man has hairy pets, like cats and dogs, the fleas that infest 

 them primarily often attack him as a compliment, and in some sections 

 of the world and of own country fleas are not insignificant either in 

 numbers or effects. 



