WINTER MEETING. 229 



are still used for disciplinary pnrposes in ways which we do not always 

 comprehend. Even the noxious species that temporarily cause us so 

 much inconvenience and disappointment are valuable in creating habits 

 of close observation, -of patience, perseverance, industry and foresight 

 and for stimulating invention. But surprising as the statement may 

 seem to some, the vast majority of insect speoips have none but benefi- 

 cent relations to the vegetable and animal kingdoms; fertilizing tiowers, 

 keeping down too exuberant plants, providing food for fish, birds and 

 reptiles, and this outside of the few whose products man has learned 

 to adopt to his needs or enjoyment. 



When we take a philosophical view of the subject we recognize 

 that the l?*bor and trouble that man has with pernicious insects are 

 largely the concomitants of his own enterprise and ambition. He in- 

 terferes with the adjustments of nature, adapting her in a one sided 

 way, to his own purposes, and when some of her laws, of which he did 

 not take account — or would be in any case powerless to change — work 

 out results that are inimical to his interests, he is surprised and imagines 

 there is " some new soil under the sun." 



Oar era has been termed the "Age of insects, and yet it is not 

 probable that more species exist now than in the earliest period of 

 recorded time.'' Individuals have indeed been incomputably multi- 

 plied, but man, not nature, has provided the conditions. Insects that 

 were once local have become universal — transported over plains and 

 mountains by our railroads and across broad oceans by our swifc 

 steamers. The wide dissemination, not only of essential food plants » 

 but of thousiads of others that minister to luxury or the aesthetic 

 tastes; the unnaturally abundant food supply in grain fields, gardens 

 and orchards upon which millions of insects are bred, where tens would 

 scarcely have found sustenance on wild grasses, herbs or native fruits, 

 and more than all, the destruction of wild animals and birds that origi- 

 nally kept the too prolific grasshoppers, flies and catipillars in check 

 are the modern agencies of insect-spread and multiplication. It will 

 thus be seen that settlement and all the concomitants of high civiliza- 

 tion have so disarrangd the natural adjustments of animal and veget- 

 able life that it is no wonder thit certain species show disproportionate 

 increase and vary in their habits to accommodate themselves to the 

 new conditions. 



Had man been able to take account of all the probabilities, he 

 might, no doubt, have prevented to a considerable extent the evils 

 from which he suffers. But with all the unfortunate experience of the 

 last century, the fact is that he still neglects to take the precautionary 

 measures that might save him from an aggravation of the same troubles. 



