Insects may take twenty per cent of the fruit crops in the United States, but in return they give us the remain- 

 ing eighty per cent, for tliey pollenate the flowers and so enable the fruit to develop. Photograph from wax model 

 of apple blossoms exhibited in the insect hall of the American Museum 



Insects 



AN INEXHAUSTIBLE AND RELATIVELY UNTOUCHED FIELD FOR 

 RECREATION OR RESEARCH 



By FRANK E. LUTZ 



THERE are certain threadbare sub- 

 jects which contain so much 

 poorly appreciated truth that 

 additional articles upon them may not 

 only be pardoned but also welcomed. 

 One of these is certainly the importance 

 of insects. Important? In all ways. 

 They are small but mighty and I almost 

 believe that, even as to bulk, they would 

 run other groups a close race. If all 

 the insects were one insect what a great 

 insect that would be! 



When we consider the number of 

 species, there is really no good second to 

 insects. There are as many (probably 

 more) kinds of these animals within a 

 hundred miles of New York City (even 

 though that circle contains a great deal 

 of insectless salt water) as there are of 



birtls in the whole world. The figures 

 in the note below ^ are not accurate — 

 they cannot be made so — but they are 

 intended to be fair. Even if there were 

 no other considerations, would not the 

 fact that approximately three-quarters 

 of the known species of animals of the 

 world are insects, place them in the top 

 rank? 



Think of the chance for studies of 

 life histories — more than ten thousand 



1 The following shows the number of described species 

 in the various animal groups, with insects not only 

 leading in number of species bvit also standing for 

 approximately three-quarters of the whole number of 

 known animals of the world: 



Insects 400,000 Worms 7,000 



MoUusks 50,000 Arachnida 5,000 



Fishes 15,000 Protozoa 5,000 



Birds 13,000 Reptiles and Amphibians 5,000 



Crustaceans 8,000 Mammals 4,500 



