560 State Board of Agriculture, &c. 



needed in keeping off insects as much as in any other part 

 of agriculture. I tliiiik that few cultivators will question 

 this, and jet how few there are that have taken the trouble 

 to inform themselves as to the structure, use, or injurious- 

 ness, habits, etc., of any one of the many insects that every 

 year infest their orchards and fields ! According to care- 

 fully collected statistics, the losses in this country from the 

 ravages of insects are enormous. From the best statistics 

 that he could obtain, Riley estimates the damage done by 

 the chinch bug in Missouri alone, in 1874, at not less than 

 $19,000,000. No one, so far as I know, has ever estimated 

 the losses from the attacks of potato bugs, or many others 

 of our worst depredators, but it is certain that in many 

 States the loss in crops destroyed by these insects, Hessian 

 flies, chinch bugs, army worms, canker worms, and all the 

 rest, amount annually to millions of dollars. Those best 

 acquainted with the subject and best able to form a fair es- 

 timate, declare that the annual losses in the United States 

 amount to from three to five hundred millions of dollars. A 

 freshet or tornado which should destroy in any single State 

 of the Union as nmch property as insects do every year, 

 would arouse the people to seek means of preventing are 

 currence of the disaster, and yet in the face of such losses as 

 those named, the majority of those most immediately con- 

 cerned sit as if helpless and try to bear them as philosophi- 

 cally as they can. They seem to think that not much can 

 be done to prevent them, that like a wet season or a late 

 spring they must be endured. I do not pretend to say that 

 all, or even most of these losses could l)e prevented, but I 

 do say most emphatically that if proper measures are 



