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PREFACE. 



To the President and Members of the Missouri State Board of Agriculture: 



Gentlemen : The following pages constitute my Seventh Annual Keport on the 

 Noxious, Beneficial and other Insects of the State of Missouri. 



As its contents show, the j-ear 1S74 has been remarkable for tlie wide-spread suf- 

 fering that insects injurious to Agriculture have entailed, especially in the Mississippi 

 Valley and the country to the West. Our own State, though not suffering so much as 

 some of her sister States, did not escape immense injury. Added to a severe drouth, 

 which shortened most crops, our farmers suffered much more than usual from the rav- 

 ages of the Chinch Bug; while in the western counties they also suffered from the visi- 

 tations of the Rocky Mountain Locust, or so-called " Grasshopper," which spread such 

 desolation over so large a portion of the fair West. Both these insects receive that 

 large share of attention in the present Keport which their importance and the interest 

 Just now attaching to them demand. Still a third insect, namely, the Flat-headed Apple- 

 tree Borer, has been uuprecedentedly abundant and injurious to our fruit and shade 

 trees, and it gives me pleasure to lay before the people some new facts which will help 

 to a better mastery of it. 



A law passed by the last Legislature not only changes somewhat the mode of 

 binding and distributing the Agricultural Eeport, of which this forms a part, but in- 

 creases the edition from six to twelve thousand, and limits the number of pages it 

 shall contain to 500. Finding that the articles on the noxious insects, of which this Re- 

 port treats, occupy more than the ordinary number of pages allotted to me, I have 

 deviated somewhat from previous custom, and omitted the chapters on Beneficial and 

 Innoxious Insects, with which its predecessors have ended. In the article on thellocky 

 Mountain Locust, the reasons.'are given at length why I believe that this plague will 

 never do serious harm beyond a certain line there indicated. It gave me no small satis- 

 faction to be able to allay last Fall the fears our farmers east of that line entertained of 

 being overrun by the pests. For some years past, Kansas, by one means and another, 

 and especially by a liberal policy on the part of her Legislature toward lier State Hor- 

 ticultural Society, has done all in her power to attract immigration. Our own State 

 government has repeatedly refused the appeal of our State Horticultural Society for 

 small appropriations to enable it to exhibit the fruits and advertise the resources and 

 capabilities of the State ; and other measures intended to encourage immigration have 

 been left without support. The consequence of such legislative neglect, and of 

 other less avoidable occurrences, was seen in the trains of emigrant wagons that during 

 the last two or three years have been passing through our State, bound for Kansas or 



