THE INSECTS OF NEW JERSEY. 31 



CHAPTER IV. 



BENEFITS AND INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



It is universally understood that insects cause greater or less 

 injury each year to farm crops, and that injury has been con- 

 servatively estimated as averaging 20 per cent, of the total 

 value. For the year 1908 this meant a loss to the United States 

 at large of $1,500,000,000, an almost incredible sum! In the 

 State of New Jersey the 20 per cent, depreciation in value is 

 fully maintained when all the crops are jointly considered, and 

 it means an annual loss to the State running well into the mil- 

 lions. Much of this loss is avoidable and much of it is avoided by 

 progressive agriculturists and horticulturists, leaving most of the 

 burden where it justly belongs the ignorant, careless or in- 

 different farmer. 



But it is fair to present, on the other hand, the fact that with- 

 out insects many kinds of crops could not be raised at all, and it 

 is a serious question whether, if benefit and loss could be bal- 

 anced, the benefit would not far outweigh the injury. It is as 

 pollenizers that insects are chiefly beneficial, aside from bee- 

 products, and many of our fruit and forage plants are largely 

 or altogether dependent upon them for bountiful crops. Red- 

 clover seed depends upon bumble-bees entirely; small fruits like 

 strawberries, raspberries, &c., would be only a scant set without 

 the flies and bees that visit the flowers, and many of our tree 

 fruits are similarly served. 



Cucurbs, including citrons, melons, squashes and the like, rjeed 

 bees of definite species for best results, and there are few 

 cultivated plants on which some insects are not of some benefit. 



Not only plant life is affected; indeed, almost all farm and 

 other animals have insect parasites of some kind, internal or 

 external, and here there is little to be said in favor of insects. 

 To be sure, many of them are scavengers, removing animal and 

 other decay, and thus they are indirectly beneficial, but the bene- 

 fits so derived are in no proportion to the injury caused by the 

 direct attack. Every dairyman knows that when cattle have to 



