﻿PREFACE. 



To the President and Members of the Missouri State Boai'd of Agrieultni'e : 



Gentlemen : — The following pages constitute my Ninth Annual Keport on the 

 Noxious, Beneficial and other Insects of the State of Missouri, laid before you in 

 synopsis at your last annual meeting. 



During no year since I have been studying the habits of the insects of our State, 

 have the farmers enjoyed such general immunity from insect ravages as during the 

 past year, if we except the work of the Rocky Mountain Locust toward the end of the 

 growing season. This immunity was largely due to the wet character of the summers of 

 1875 and 1876 ; for it is a fact that 1 have frequently laid stress on, that the larger num- 

 ber of the cultivator's worst insect enemies thrive and multiply most during dry 

 seasons. While there was general immunity from insect ravages throughout the 

 State, it was all the greater and more noticeable in the western counties which, in 1875, 

 had been so sorely afflicted. The native locusts were scarce, the Chinch Bug was 

 scarcely heard of, and the general freedom from noxious species, there, which I had 

 anticipated in my Eighth Keport, was the subject of remark with all close observers. 



It is unnecessary to call particular attention to the subject matter of this Ninth 

 Report, further than to state that a preponderance of space is devoted to that "West- 

 ern scourge, the Rocky Mountain Locust, which again invaded, from the Northwest, 

 most of the fertile country between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, and laid 

 eggs over a larger area than ever before. Reaching our western counties late in the 

 season, the insects did comparatively little damage in Missouri, except to Fall wheat, 

 which was mostly eaten down and killed. They left their eggs, however, and much 

 injury may be anticipated this Spring. A repetition of the ravages of 1875 is probable, 

 but not in the counties most ravaged that year, which will not materially suffer. 



The particular counties in which injury may be anticipated are detailed on p. 67. 

 In order that the Report may be distributed among the farmers in those counties in 

 time to be of service to them, I have hastened its publication by omitting articles 

 on the Hessian Fly, the Grape Phylloxera, and some other insects which I had more 

 particularly studied the past year. 



In proportion as this Report, and the preceding one for 1875, are circulated in the 

 western counties ; in that proportion will the labor bestowed upon them and the expe- 

 rience contained in them prove profitable to the State. I sincerely hope, therefore, 

 that the illiberal spirit manifest in the Twenty-ninth General Assembly, iu the attempt 

 to abolish the State Board of Agriculture, and the refusal to make any appropriation 

 therefor, will give place to more generous and enlightened action that will increase 

 rather than diminish the means for usefulness of the only State organization created 

 especially for promoting the farming interests of the State. 



