VALUE UF BIRDS TO MAN. 



33 



III 1.S5(^ in Livingston County, New York, two thousand 

 acres on flats which would have 3^ielded thirty busliels of 

 wheat [)er acre were not harvested because of the destruc- 

 tive worli of this insect. ^ 



Dr. C. L. Marlatt, of tlie Bureau of Entomology of the 

 United States Department of Agriculture, who has made 

 careful calculations of the loss still 

 occasioned by the Hessian fly {Cecido- 

 myia destructor) in the wheat-growing 

 States, says that in comparatively few 

 years does it cause a loss of less than 

 ten per cent, of the crop. On the val- 

 uation of the crop of 1904: this would 

 amount to over fifty million dollars. 

 Dr. Marlatt states that in the year 1900 

 the loss in the wheat-growing States 

 from this tiny midge undoubtedly a])- 

 proached one hundred million dollars. ^ 



The chinch l)ug [BJissus Jencoj)te)'us) attacks many staple 

 crops, and has been a seriously destructive pest in the 

 Mississippi valley States for man}^ years, where it injures 

 chiefly wheat and corn. Dr. Shinier in his notes on this 

 insect estimates the loss caused by it in the Mississippi 

 valley in 1864 at one hundred million dollars,^ while Dr. 

 Riley gives the loss in that year as seventy-three million 

 dollars in Illinois alone. ^ These are only a few of the 

 extreme losses. Year after year the injuries from the 

 depredations of this bug have amounted to many millions 

 of dollars. 



The cotton worm (Alabama argiUacea) has lieen known 

 as a serious pest to the cotton crop for more than a centurv. 

 The average loss in the cotton States from this caterpillar 



Fig. 16. — Hessian fly. 

 Aliout twelve times nat- 

 ural size. 



^ First Annual Report on the Injurious and Other Insects of the State of New- 

 York, by J. A. Lintner, 1882, p. 6. 



^ The Annual Loss occasioned by Destructive Insects in tlie United States, by 

 C. L. Marlatt. Yearbook, United States Department of Agriculture, 1904, p. 467. 



^ Report on the Rocky Mountain Locust, by A. S. Packard. Ninth Annual 

 Report of the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, 

 1875, p. 697. 



* First Annual Report on the Injurious and Other Insects of the State of New- 

 York, by J. A. Lintner, 1882, p. 7. 



