INSECTS AND PLANTS 81 



is that a great many insects, like far more highly developed 

 animals mankind have discovered that America is a 

 country of huge possibilities. We in Britain have our 

 insect pests, it is true, and very annoying and, at times, 

 exceedingly destructive they prove to be ; but, at the worst, 

 they are a mere drop in the ocean compared to the count- 

 less hordes of six-footed beings that lay waste the crops 

 of the United States. In these pages we recognise no 

 horizon, so our examples have been chosen with the object 

 of showing that man's conflict with the insect world is 

 a stern reality, and no better means are available for so 

 doing than by laying bare some of the insect problems of 

 the great American Continent. 



In conversation with an American scientist some few 

 months ago, the writer, commenting on the fact that far 

 greater strides had been made in economic entomology 

 in America than in this country, was told that the science 

 had been forced on the American Government from very 

 urgency. In 1904, and the case is more desperate at the 

 present time, a writer in the Year-book of the United 

 States Department of Agriculture said : " In no country in 

 the world do insects impose a heavier tax on farm pro- 

 ducts than in the United States. The losses resulting 

 from the depredations of insects on all the plant products 

 of the soil, both in their growing and in their stored state, 

 together with those on livestock, exceed the entire expendi- 

 ture of the National Government, including the pension 

 roll and the maintenance of the Army and Navy." Seven 

 years later the same writer stated, in the Journal of 

 Economic Entomology, that " very careful estimates, based 

 on crop reports and actual insect damage over a series of 

 years, show that the loss due to insect pests of farm pro- 

 ducts, including fruit and livestock, now reaches the almost 

 inconceivable total of $1,000,000,000 annually." Small 

 wonder, then, that we turn to such a country when we wish 

 to study these economic questions in their most acute form. 



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