NATURE'S CRAFTSMEN 



inflicted by some well-known insects, antl the enormous 

 total will surprise those who have not considered the 

 matter. The author is indebted to Dr. L. 0. Howard, 

 the accomplished entomologist of the United States 

 Department of Agriculture, for the following statistics, 

 which were kindly furnished in compliance with a re- 

 quest addressed to Mr. Secretary Wilson. Dr. Howard 

 is not an alarmist, but a careful and conservative man 

 of science, at the head of the most important organiza- 

 tion of economic entomology in the world. We learn 

 through him that the chinch bug caused a loss of $30,- 

 000,000 in 1871, upward of $100,000,000 in 1874, and, 

 in 1887, $60,000,000. The Rocky Mountain locust, or 

 Western grasshopper, in 1874 destroyed $100,000,000 in 

 the crops of Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and Iowa, and 

 the indirect loss was probably as much more. For many 

 years the cotton caterpillar caused an average annual 

 loss in the Southern States of $15,000,000, while in 1868 

 and 1873 the loss reached $30,000,000. The fly weevil, 

 our most destructive enemy to stored grains, particularly 

 throughout the South, inflicts an annual loss in the 

 whole country of $40,000,000. The codling moth, the 

 chief ravager of the apple and pear crops, destroys every 

 year fruit valued at $30,000,000 to $40,000,000. The 

 damage to live-stock inflicted by the ox bot or ox warble 

 amounts annually to $36,000,000. 



In 1904 the loss to the corn crop by various insects 

 was $80,000,000, of which $20,000,000 was caused by 

 the chinch bug. In the same year (1904) the Hessian fly 

 caused a shortage of fifty million bushels of wheat, a 

 loss of $40,000,000. These are fair samples of the 

 enormous money losses produced in one country by a 

 few of the pygmy captains of pernicious industry whose 



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