186 THE SURVIVAL OP THE UNLIKE. [vil. 



Dr. Lintner has written pointedly upon this subject : * 

 The excessive ravages of insects in the United States 

 are largely owing to the cultivation of their food -plants 

 in extended areas. Two hundred years ago not even 

 the wild crab, the earliest representative of the apple, 

 existed in this country, and consequently there were no 

 apple insects. Later, when a few apple trees became 

 the adjunct of the simple homes of the early settlers, 

 those of our insects to which they offered, more desirable 

 food than that on which they had previously subsisted 

 were obliged to wing their way often for many miles in 

 search of a tree upon which to deposit their eggs. If 

 birds were then abundant, how few of the insects could 

 accomplish such extended flights ! But in the apple 

 orchards of the present day — some of them spreading 

 in almost unbroken mass of foliage over hundreds of 

 acres — our numerous apple insects may find the thrifty 

 root, the vigorous trunk, the succulent twig, the tender 

 bud, the juicy leaf, the fragrant blossom, and the crisp 

 fruit spread out before them in broad array, as if it 

 were a special offering to insect voracity, or a banquet 

 purposely extending an irresistible invitation. * * * 

 Careful cultivation has made it the best of its kind ; 

 appetite is stimulated ; development is hastened ; broods 

 are increased in number ; individuals are multiplied 

 beyond the conservation of parasitic destruction; facil- 

 ities of distribution are afforded with hardly a proper 

 exercise of locomotive organs, and when these almost 

 useless members have become aborted, as in the wing- 

 less females of the bark -louse and the canker-worms, 

 the interlocking branches afford convenient passage 



•First Rep. State Entom. N. Y. (1882), 10. 



