THE DIPTEROUS ENEMIES OF MAN. 



Ix this, tlie conturv of invention and age of scientific 

 discovery, few more permanent records will be left on 

 the page of history than that which contains the accounts 

 of man's successful eiforts to master the insect world and 

 turn the strength or weakness of the various important 

 species to his use. 



The stores of wealth accumulated by some all powerful 

 syndicate, or wrenched from a helpless community by a 

 seemingly resistless trust, sink into insignificance when 

 compared with the vast amounts in value which are an- 

 nually annihilated by the noxious insects of this conti- 

 nent. So great has been the recuperative energy of the 

 American people, and so easy has it seemed in the past 

 to prepare crops in sufficiency to allow for a large per- 

 centage of destruction, that the annual loss has not ap- 

 pealed to them, as a people, but has simply touched the 

 pocket book of the individual loser and attracted the at- 

 tention of the economic entomologist. The great volume 

 of work which has been done and is now in progress in 

 our various State experiment stations, and on a still 

 larger scale at our National Department of Entomology 

 at Washington, is far bf^'ond the ken of the public, and 

 is even too little appreciated by many entomologists, to 

 some of whom the work of suggesting new genera and 

 species is far more fascinating. The records of the agen- 

 cies for relieving man of the dread etfeets of his insect 



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