270 TRANSACTIONS OF THE HORTICULTURAL 



friends together, and they come and endeavor to console and com- 

 fort one another. They raise their voices and cry aloud against all 

 creeping things. They devise traps and contrivances, and concoct 

 all manner of nauseous compounds with which to circumvent their 

 enemies, and then they resolve to ' try, try again.' Yet the bug 

 and the worm, the moth and the beetle, heed them not, but continue 

 on in the even tenor of their ways and multiply exceedingly; and if 

 one be slain a thousand come to avenge his death. And the last 

 days of the fruit grower are more deplorable than the first; and 

 weeping and wailing are heard in the land." 



Such, we may conclude, is the substance of the record of fruit- 

 growing now being written for the Northwest. In all soberness, 

 this matter of insect depredations has become a very serious one. 

 Prof. Riley says: '" Seek where we may, we can not find a place or 

 a substance on which or in which some insect does not feed." This 

 is a startling fact, and one which is not realized in its full extent. 

 How many of the numberless ills that beset the human family may 

 be traced to the depredations of insect tribes, science has not yet in- 

 formed us. They infest our grain fields, our meadows, our stock; 

 they riot in our houses, our orchards, our clothing and our food; 

 they bring disease and death to our bodies. Indeed, it would not be 

 a very great stretch of the imagination to conceive that this planet 

 may some day be rendered uninhabitable to human beings by the 

 multiplication of insect life. We are hardly willing to admit, how- 

 ever, that, should such a catastrophe occur, it would be in accord- 

 ance with the theory of the " survival of the fittest." How long it 

 might take, in such an event, to evolve man again from the begin- 

 ning, I leave for the Darwinian philosophers to decide. We are 

 daily, too, being brought in contact with some new form of insect 

 life. 



But, taking things as they are, the question with us and now 

 pressing heavily upon us, is how best to protect ourselves from these 

 numerous marauding tribes. This, I take it, can only be done suc- 

 cessfully by better understanding them. It is a clear proposition, 

 that to be able to combat them, and counteract their evil works, we 

 must know something of their modes of propagation and habits of 

 life. Hence, it is important that these should be made a study. 

 And yet, by a great majority of people, it is regarded as a very small 

 business for a man or woman to devote time to the investigation of 

 bugs and worms. The truth is, there are really few who are fit for 

 such study; few of us who have so schooled and disciplined our 

 minds to habits of patient and close observation as to qualify our- 

 selves for the work. And in view of the vastness of the results and in- 

 terests at stake, I can conceive of no science the study of which is more 

 important to us than that of entomology. Our children should be 

 taught to see in a butterfly more than its beauty, and in a caterpillar 

 more than its repulsive features, and to inquire into the life and 



