l86 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



cereals, field and garden crops is very large and constantly 

 growing, for it is continually receiving accessions both from 

 native and foreign sources. 



The destructiveness of some of these insects is so enormous 

 as to amount to a heavy annual tax on the people of the United 

 States. Hence, since the first settlement of the country, the 

 amount of this annual tax has been increasing. In September, 

 1868, Professor D. B. Walsh, editor of the American Entomol- 

 ogist, estimated that the country then suffered from the depre- 

 dations of noxious insects to the amount of three hundred 

 million dollars annually. By the census of 1875, the agricul- 

 tural products of this country w^ere valued at two billion five 

 hundred million dollars. Of this, amount, says Dr. Packard, 

 we, in all probability, annually lose over two hundred million 

 dollars from the attacks of injurious insects. In the report 

 of the Department of Agriculture for 1884, the losses occasioned 

 by insects injurious to agriculture in the United States, it is 

 said, are variously estimated at from three hundred million 

 dollars to four hundred million dollars annually. In 1890, 

 Professor C. V. Riley, in response to a letter of inquiry, stated 

 that no very recent estimate of the injury done to crops by 

 insects had been made, but that he had estimated some time 

 previously that the injury to agriculture by insects in the 

 United States exceeded three hundred million dollars annually. 

 Mr. James Fletcher, in his annual address as president of the 

 Society of Economic Entomologists, in Washington, in 1891, 

 stated that the agricultural products of the United States were 

 then estimated at about three billion eight hundred million 

 dollars. It was believed that a sum equal to about one-tenth this 

 amount, or three hundred and eighty million dollars, was lost 

 through the ravages of injurious insects. The latest calcula- 

 tion of the loss occasioned by insect injury in the United States 

 which has come to my notice is that of Dr. C. L. Marlatt, who, 

 "by careful estimates, approximates the percentage of loss to 

 cereal products, hay, cotton, tobacco, truck crops, sugars, fruits, 

 forests, miscellaneous crops, animal products, and products 

 in storage. Dr. Marlatt attributes a loss of eighty million dol- 

 lars to the corn crop alone, and approximates the loss to the 

 wheat crop at one hundred millions each year. The injury 

 done to the hay crop is estimated at five hundred and thirty 

 thousand dollars, while the codling moth alone is believed to 



