206 BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



bee, to insect product such as cochineal and lac. Medicine 

 even is indebted to insects for many of its remedies. Not 

 only, as in most of these instances, by tlieir products are in- 

 sects directly beneficial — they themselves furnish food for 

 many useful animals and even for man himself. We are in- 

 clined to look with distrust upon insects as food, but in other 

 countries they have and still do afford man great quantities 

 of food. We arc told in the Bible how John, in the wilder- 

 ness, lived upon locusts and wild honey — certainly entomologi- 

 cal food. The Indians west of the Rocky Mountains still use 

 grasshoppers and other insects as food. 



Indirectly, insects confer vastly more important benefits, 

 some of them all unnoticed by us. First, they act as scaven- 

 gers, as sanitary agents, removing all sorts of injurious sub- 

 stances. We have in the house-fly, although it is such a nui- 

 sance, one of the most important scavengers. The burying- 

 bcetlcs, also, do good service in this way. If there is a dead 

 insect, little bird or mouse, in a field or pasture, these beetles dig 

 under it, it falls into the earth, and is covered up. In this 

 way, not only is the offensiveness of the decomposing matter 

 avoided, but all the fertilizing properties are retained in the 

 soil and made advantageous to the farmer. Insects also do a 

 great work in destroying and removing large masses of car- 

 rion. Tlie excrement of many animals constantly falling 

 upon the ground is attacked, undermined, devoured, scat- 

 tered abroad by a hoard of insects. 



A far greater number of insects are beneficial by destroy- 

 ing injurious species, which are kept in check more in this 

 tlian in any other way. Of these beneficial species, there 

 are two prirtcipal classes. First, those which are predaceous, 

 preying directly on other species, capturing and devouring 

 them ; second, the truly parasitic species. In the former 

 class we have the tiger-beetles, which are destructive in all 

 the active stages of their existence, the grubs, armed with ira 

 mense jaws, living in holes in the ground and devouring every 

 living insect which falls in their way ; the full grown beetle, 

 like miniature tigers, lie in wait and pounce upon weaker 

 species. Hundreds of other carnivorous beetles are equally 



