35 



A PRELIMINARY ACCOUNT OF INSECTS OF ECO- 

 NOMIC IMPORTANCE IN THE HA- 

 WAIIAN ISLANDS. 



By F. W. Terry. 



Division of Entomology, Haiimian Sugar Planters' Association 

 Experiment Station. 



(Continued from Vol. II, p. yT^.) 



GENERAL REMARKS. 



Dipt era (True Flies). 



This order of insects is a large and well defined one, and many 

 of its members are extremely important economically, since they 

 are directly injurious to man and domestic animals. Every 

 one is familiar with those persistent atoms of annoyance — "mos- 

 Cjuitoes" — several species of which are the means of conveying 

 disease and death to thousands, in the form of malaria, ele- 

 phantiasis or yellow fever, as the recent mortality at New Or- 

 leans and the neighborhood has demonstrated. Again immense 

 areas of otherwise valuable pasturage and agricultural areas in 

 Southeast, Central and West Africa, are at present practically 

 closed to settlement and development, owing to the presence of 

 the dreaded "tsetse" flies; these acting as the intermediate hosts 

 of the micro-organism Trypanosoma, producing the "nagana" or 

 "sleeping sickness," so fatal to stock and man. Others, too well 

 known, are the Bot-flies, Buffalo-gnats or "Black Fly," Horse- 

 flies, Horn-fly and Screw-worm, all extremely injurious to stock, 

 the larvae of the latter sometimes even causing death in man. 



The fruit flies are also a great menace to our fruits, as the 

 Melon fly has proved on these Islands. The Gall-gnats, although 

 extremely small and delicate, are also a formidable group ; per- 

 haps the best known of which are the "Hessian fly" and "Wheat 

 midge." Besides this army of markedly injurious flies, there are 

 numbers apparently of little economic importance, although no 

 doubt as our knowledge of these increases, many will be removed 

 from the "unimportant" to the ranks of the "beneficial" or "in- 

 jurious." 



