204 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



facts showing the importance to all those engaged in agricul- 

 tural operations, of the study of insects, and, if possible, to 

 make apparent how necessary to the farmer is a practical 

 knowledge of their appearances, structure and habits. The 

 ravages of insects are so familiar and yet so little understood, 

 that we have come too often to regard them as the result of 

 direct and unavoidable acts of Providence, no more under our 

 control than droughts, severe storms, or unseasonable frosts. 

 We spare no pains to prepare the fields, plant the seed, or de- 

 stroy the weeds, but when insects appear, we blindly submit. 

 If insects were as well understood as the weeds, I see no rea- 

 son wliy we miglit not as successfully combat them. Al- 

 though there is so much complaint of the ravages of insects, 

 few people have any adequate idea of the amount of injury 

 they do annually. 



In illustration of the injury done to crops by insects, I need 

 only allude to the destruction caused by grasshoppers the 

 past sen son, or to the banishment of the wheat crop from 

 New England. Undoubtedly many causes have combined to 

 drive the cultivation of wheat from the Eastern States, but I 

 think all intelligent farmers will acknowledge that the attacks 

 of insects have been at least one of the principal causes. 

 Even at the west the damage done to this crop alone is enor- 

 mous. According to the estimate of Dr. Schimer, "in the 

 year 1864, three-fourths of the wheat and one-half of the 

 corn crop were destroyed by the chinch-bug throughout 

 many extensive districts, comprising almost the entire North- 

 west." In the single State of Illinois he estimates the dam- 

 age done in that year to the wheat and corn crops by this one 

 species of insect, at over seventy-three millions of dollars. 

 This, to be sure, is an exceptional case, but it indicates tlie 

 amount of injury that may be done by a single species of in- 

 sect; and there are others which are nearly as destructive. 

 The European cabbage-butterfly, which first made its ap- 

 pearance at Quebec in 1859, and has now spread over all the 

 eastern part of tlie country, is stated by Abbe Provancher, a 

 Canadian entomologist, to have destroyed in one year about 

 Quebec, cabbages to the value of $250,000. According to Dr. 

 Fitch, the Hessian fly destroyed, in the State of New York, in 



