Introductioa 



lowest primary grades at an age when activity is their most im- 

 portant characteristic, and they have an instinctive interest in the 

 activities of insects, birds and higher animals. 



When pupils pass from the primary to what for convenience 

 we may call the intermediate grades— about the fourth and fifth 

 years of school— it seems desirable to change decidedly the point 

 of view. The activity now should have some purpose to which the 

 pupils will respond. In my experience these years are the ones 

 in which to center the nature work on various phases of gardening 

 —flowers, vegetables, grains, fruits, trees— and to correlate such 

 gardening activities with language, drawing, arithmetic, geography, 

 reading, and other studies. From a set of garden plots one can 

 take up a great variety of special topics which will be of vital in- 

 terest, none of which is likely to be of more importance than that 

 of the economic relations of insects. The child who finds a host 

 of little creatures destroying his precious crops has an intensive 

 interest in learning the life story of each pest and the methods of 

 preventing its injuries. Before he studies the subject very long 

 he will find that no insect lives for itself alone, but that rather it 

 has numberless relations with other forms of living things. For 

 a boy or girl to get this great fact definitely in mind is a real educa- 

 tional experience and few books ever written are more likely to 

 help in such an achievement than this one by Doctor Howard. 

 For the relations of insects to one another depend largely upon the 

 fact that they live so freely at the expense of their fellows. Nearly 

 every injurious insect has a host of predaceous and parasitic enemies 

 which tend to keep it in subjection, and a knowledge of these ene- 

 mies is necessary for the successful control of the pest itself. 

 Numerous life histories are here recorded of these little creatures 

 that prey upon their kindred and the intricate stories of their lives 

 are more wonderful than many an imagined fairy tale. A great 

 naturalist once said that the devices by which flowers are modified 

 for purposes of cross fertilization are more intricate than the mind 

 of man could invent and certainly one who studies the lives of in- 

 sects soon concludes that the adaptations to existence shown by 

 these tiny beings are still more marvelous. 



It has often happened that acquaintance with the intricate 

 devices by which insects conduct their lives is helpful in the prac- 

 tical working out of problems or controlling the injuries of plant- 

 feeding species. A notable example of this has recently come to 



