210 Missouri' State Horticultural Society. 



brought famine and pestilence in their train. If unrestrained 

 power coukl be given them, all counter-checks removed, and they 

 were left free to attack us in our persons, food, clothing, houses 

 ■and domestic animals, the consequent disease, poverty, exposure, 

 and want would, in the end, remove the human race from the face 

 of the earth. Sir, earth and water teem with them ; they swarm 

 in the tropics, find a suitable home in the arctic regions. . They 

 abound in our homes, our gardens, orchards, fields, vineyards 

 and forests. In the vegetable kingdom they are found in the 

 seed, the root, the stalk or trunk, the pith, the twig, the bud, the 

 leaf, the blossom and the fruit, within or upon every portion of the 

 vegetable organization. 



From this general diffusion there necessarily results extensive 

 losses. 



Ten years ago Dr. Packard stated •" I could name upward of 

 fifty species of insects which prey upon cereals and grasses, and as 

 many more which infest our field crops. Some thirty well-known 

 species range our garden vegetables. There are nearly fifty species 

 which attack the grape vine, and their number is rapidly increas- * 

 ing. About seventy-five species make their annual onset upon the 

 apple tree, and nearly as many may be found on the plnm, pear, 

 peach and cherry. Among our shade trees over fifty species infest 

 the oak ; twenty-five the elm ; seventy-five the walnut and over one 

 hundred species prey upon the pine. Many of the above pests have 

 doubled their number in the last ten years, and it is impossible to 

 estimate the loss sustained each year from their ravages. The casli 

 value of wheat and corn destroyed in the year 1864 in the L^ate of 

 Illinois, by the chinch-bug is estimated at seventy-three million of 

 dollars. The loss to corn, j^otatoes^and other crops in the states of 

 Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri in 1874 from the ravages of 

 the Rocky Mountain locust is computed at one hundred million of 

 dollars. For the same insect in the western part of Missouri includ- 

 ing 20 counties for the year 18T5 of Qfteen millions of dollars, 

 in some counties the loss was two million of dollars. The loss in the 

 southern states from the ravages of the cotton worm has amounted 

 to over thirty million of dollars. 



Tills is certainly sufficient to give us an idea of the importance 

 of the study of economic entomology. An intimate knowledge of 

 the habits and life history of these various insect pests, will enable 

 us to wage effectual war against them, and limit their depredations 

 to the minimum — we cannot hope to exterminate tliem entirely^ 

 For such pests as those which feed upon the foliage of our apple 



