2 FIRST ANNUAL REPORT OF THE STATE EMTOilOLOGIST. 



assumed an importance in its direct application to advancement in 

 agriculture, horticulture and sylviculture, second to uo other depart- 

 ment of natural history. It has called to its furtherance some of the 

 best intellect in this country and in Europe. The literature of ento- 

 mology has become extensive and assumed honorable rank. Five 

 monthly publications exclusively devoted to the science are ably sus- 

 tained. A list of American entomologists lately compiled contains 

 nearly a thousand names. Several of our, States are employing State 

 entomologists, and others, in compliance with demands made upon 

 them by agriculturists and others, are moving for their appointment. 

 The Department of Agriculture at Washington is earnestly engaged 

 in entomological work, through its Entomologist and corps of assist- 

 ants; and the G-eneral Government lias for several years been sustain- 

 ing a Special Commission, through liberal appropriations, charged with 

 the investigation of a few of our more injurious insects whose excess- 

 ive ravages and wide-spread distribution have given to them a na- 

 tional importance. 



The importance of entomological study may be more fully shown by 

 some further considerations which I beg leave to present: 



1. Extent of Insect Depredations. 



It has been truthfully said that insects have established a kind of 

 universal empire over the earth and its inhabitants. Minute as many 

 of them are, and insignificant in size to other than naturalists, yet, in 

 combination, they have desolated countries and brought famine and 

 pestilence in their train. If unrestrained power could 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. Air, earth and water teem 

 with them ; there may be claimed for them almost an omnipresence ; 

 they swarm in the tropics, and find a suitable home in the Arctic re- 

 gions. They abound in our homes, our gardens, orchards, fields, vine- 

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

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

 the leaf, the blossom, and the fruit — within or upon every jwrtion of 

 the vegetable organism. They are parasitic on our persons and upon or 

 Avithin all of our domestic animals. They attack and destroy fishes 

 and birds. They have their natural home in many of our articles of 

 food. By their disgusting presence and annoyance they may render 

 our homes unten ible. Tliey burrow within our household and agri- 

 cultural implements. They occasionally take possession of our books. 



