CHAPTER XIV 



INSECTS AND MANKIND 



After the preceding summary account of the bionomic 

 relations between insects and other creatures, it seems 

 fitting to dwell at the close of this book on some of the 

 connections by which insects are in diverse ways, linked 

 with the complex life of man, who, spread in his various 

 races over the surface of the earth, is everywhere in touch 

 to some extent with the world-wide hosts of insects. We 

 have noticed many examples of insects that feed on plants 

 cultivated by man as sources of his supply of food or clothing, 

 of others that live as parasites on or in the bodies of his 

 domestic animals, of others again which obtain the most 

 unpleasantly close contact with himself as they feed by 

 sucking his blood, and possibly leave therein minute 

 organisms to induce serious or deadly disease. Man, as he 

 seeks to fulfil his destiny to " replenish the earth and subdue 

 it," finds that his progress is continually checked and some- 

 times arrested by '' a thousand insect forms," individually 

 small and feeble but collectively powerful, so that to the 

 human pioneer a swarm of flies may prove an obstacle 

 more formidable than '* a lion in the path." On the other 

 hand, the hive-bee, the various silkwomas, the lac insects, 

 are themselves domestic animals of no small utility, and in 

 many aspects of the form and life of insects men find still, 

 as they have found in the past, abundant material for 

 fascinating and profitable study. 



We have already seen that there is mutual action between 

 insects and mankind in their food-gaining activities ; the 



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