Injurious and Beneficial Insects. 5 



been about thirty millions of bushels, and the corn crop about 

 one hundred and thirty-eight million bushels. Putting the cash 

 value of wheat at $1.25, and that of corn at 50 cents, the cash 

 value of the corn and wheat destroyed by this insignificant little 

 bug, no bigger than a grain of rice, in one single State and one 

 single year, will therefore, according to the above figures, foot 

 up to the astounding total of over seventy-three millions op 



DOLLARS ! " 



The imported cabbage butterfly QPieris rapce), recently intro- 

 duced from Europe, is estimated by the Abbe Provancher, a 

 Canadian entomologist, to annually destroy two hundred and 

 forty thousand dollars' worth of cabbages around Quebec. The 

 Hessian fly, according to Dr. Fitch, destroyed fifteen million 

 dollars' worth of wheat in New York State in one year (1854). 

 The army worm of the North (^Leucania nnipmicta') , which 

 was so abundant in 1861, from New England to Kansas, was 

 reported to have done damage that year in Eastern Massa- 

 chusetts exceeding a half million of dollars. The joint worm 

 (^Isosoma hordei) alone sometimes cuts off whole fields of grain 

 in Virginia and northward. The Colorado potato beetle is 

 steadily moving eastward, now ravaging the fields in Indiana 

 and Ohio, and only the forethought and ingenuity in devising 

 means of checking its attacks, resulting from a thorough 

 studyof its habits, will deliver our wasted fields from its direful 

 assaults. 



These are the injuries done by the more abundant kinds of 

 insects injurious to crops. We should not forget that each fruit 

 or shade tree, garden shrub, or vegetable, has a host of insects 

 peculiar to it, and which, year after year, renew their attacks. 

 I could enumerate upwards of fifty species of insects which prey 

 upon cereals and grass, and as many which infest our field crops. 

 Some thirty well known species ravage our garden vegetables. 

 There are nearly fifty species which attack the grape-vine, and 

 their number is rapidly increasing. About seventy-five species 

 make their annual onset upon the apple-tree, and nearly an equal 

 number may be found upon the plum, pear, peach and cherry. 

 Among our shade trees, over fifty species infest the oak ; twenty- 

 five the elm ; seventy-five the walnut, and over one hundred 

 species of insects prey upon the pine. 



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