268 Forty-fifth Report on the State Museum. 



The Voracity of Insects. 

 The larval stage of many insects is apparently one of inces- 

 sant feeding. It may be doubted of some if tliey ever sleep, or 

 even indulge in rest unless disturbed while feeding, or during 

 their molting periods, when time is demanded for the changes 

 required in the casting off of a skin distended to its utmost 

 capacity, and the formation and assumption of a new 

 one capable of further extension. Their voraciousness and 

 rapid growth may be shown in the statement of two 

 facts : A certain flesh-feeding larva will consume in twenty- 

 four hours two hundred times its original weight, — a parallel 

 to which, in the human race, would be, an infant consuming 

 in the first day of its existen.ce, fifteen hundred pounds 

 of nutriment. There are vegetable feeders, — caterpillars, 

 which, during their progress to maturity, within thirty days, 

 increase in size ten thousand times. To e(iual tliis remarkable 

 growth, a man at his maturity, would have to weigh no less than 

 forty tons. In view of such statements, need we wonder that the 

 insect world is so destructive and so potent a power for harm. 



Can Insect Ravages be Prevented ? 

 I have attempted, from a few considerations, to sIicav the 

 importance of insects in their relation to agricultural pursuits; 

 that losses appalling in their magnitude are inflicted by them; 

 and that these losses are steadily on the increasp. What can 

 be done? Can they be prevented? We answer, no, not entirely, 

 but they may be controlled. My studies of twenty-five years have 

 taught me that the insect does not exist, the injuries of which 

 may not be greatly diminished when we have learned its entire 

 life-history and its habits. Each one, when we know it fully, 

 -discloses some vulnerable point, and a particular time in one 

 of its four stages of existence when it may be attacked to the t»est 

 advantage. I assuredly speak within bounds when I say, what 

 could not with truth have been said twenty years ago, that with 

 our present knowledge and with the means now at our command, 

 in the insecticides and preventives known, and apparatus and 

 methods for their use, we can, if we will, lessen insect depreda- 



