HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 167 



Our best friends among parasitic insects occur in the orders: 

 Wasps and Flies (Hymenoptera and Diptera). Those of the 

 former are often called Ichneumon-flies, being compared with the 

 well-known animal of that name, which is said to enter the throats 

 of crocodiles to devour its eggs. Of course it requires a very- 

 strong constitution to swallow the story, antique as it is. Iclineu- 

 monidcB among insects are very small wasps, usually of a bright 

 and metallic color, which deposit their eggs in other living insects, 

 but usually in the caterpillars, although the other stages of insects 

 are by no means free of their attacks. These eggs hatch in time, 

 and the maggots thrive inside their hosts, eating at first the fatty 

 substances, later the vital organs as well. At least so the books 

 tell us; but in fact they simply eat the softer parts first, simply be- 

 cause they are not as yet strong enough to devour the harder tis- 

 sues until reaching maturity. When full-grown they either leave 

 the dying host, or spin inside of it a tough silken cocoon, inside of 

 which they transform to pupte, and later to perfect insects, which 

 leave their prison to enjoy life in less crowded quarters. Most of 

 all insects known are infested with such parasites in the one or the 

 other of their early stages. Even their eggs, small as they are, are 

 large enough to give food and shelter to some hymenopterous in- 

 sects of correspondingly small size. 



Among the Diptera or Two-winged Flies we have also some very 

 useful friends. Chief among them are the Tachina flies, which re- 

 semble our common house-flies, but are decidedly more useful. 

 These parasites glue one or more eggs to their victims, usually 

 caterpillars, from which footless maggots are soon hatched, which 

 devour the whole interior of the host upon which they were born. 



Of great assistance in this bloody war, a war of extermination, 

 which is constantly going on in a silent way, at least to us huge 

 bipeds, whose ears are not sensitive enough to hear the groans of 

 the victims, birds, animals and reptiles, most, if not all our insect- 

 ivorous birds and animals should be carefully protected ; so our 

 reptiles, providing they possess no poison. There is a great deal 

 of superstition about many of the animals found in a wild state 

 upon our fields and gardens; this superstition is mainly based 

 upon the fables of a former and less enlightened age, and is but 

 slowly disappearing under the knife of dissections made to prove 

 beyond doubt upon what such animals subsist. 



But the program of this evening calls for another paper: "In- 

 sects injurious to small fruit." 



I have been unable to devote as much time to insects affecting 

 small fruit as I would like, chiefly on account of having been away 

 fighting grasshospers in a region where horticulture is simply a 

 name, not a fact. Still I always devote as much time to fruit of 

 all kinds as I can, providing the fruit is ripe. Yet, what I have 

 observed in Minnesota clearly shows that our horticulturists have 

 their full share of noxious insects. I have gathered together in 

 one small box, which is now before you, all the species of insects 

 injurious, to these plants that I have found thus far in our state. 

 They are few in number if compared with those found in other 



