THE OKDER OF THE BT'f.S 



(Hciiii ptcra) 



How blind mankind innst seem to the insect world! To lonk at beetles 

 with their massive jaws and armor-plated bodies, or Hies with their gauzy 

 wings, or grasshoppers with their long jum])iiig legs and then class them all 

 as bugs, must seem to them ineompreliensible, i'or to be a bug, an inseet must 

 have a sharj) ])ointed beak, whatever else it has. It may or may not have 

 wings, it may ha\e a lar\al stage or it may not, but if it hasn't a l>eak and 

 can't suck then it can't he classed as a true bug. 



These sucking insects of many shapes, althdugli directly cnnnected with 

 the welfare of the human race, have been, until recently, the least known 

 of the great orders of insects. 



To this order belong the chinch bugs, the cause of an estimated loss to the 

 grain growers of twenty million dollars a year; the great Phylloxera, which 

 destroyed the vines on three million acres of French ^•ineyards, and the San 

 Jose scale, which has s])reatl during the i)a,st ten years thmugh e\ery state 

 and territory in the I'nitecl States and become a menace to the fruit-growing 

 industry. 



It is of this order of the insect world that l)a^■id Sharp remarks "" . . . if 

 any thing were to exterminate the enemies of Hemiptera we ourscKcs would 

 probably be starved in a few months." It does seem strange in face of all 

 these statements of authority that our best friends, the insect i\-orous birds, 

 are being killed out for lack of forest refuge. Wc spend millions to tight the 

 pests when once the.v get the upjier hand, but pay little or no attention to the 

 comforts of those tireless workers, the birds, which would keep them down. 



I am ashamed of such a fragmentary i)icture showing of this most imijor- 

 tant order, and hope someone will follo\\- on with a bug book whicii \\ ill do the 

 subject justice. 



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