56 A FEW WORDS ABOUT MOTHS. 



of its habits, will deliver our wasted fields from its direful 

 assaults. 



These are the injuries done by the more abundant kinds of 

 insects injurious to crops. We should not forget that each fruit 

 or shade tree, garden shrub or vegetable, has a host of insects 

 peculiar to it, and which, year after year, renew their attacks. 

 I could enumerate upwards of fifty species of insects which 

 prey upon cereals and grass, and as many which infest our field 

 crops. Some thirty well known species ravage our garden 

 vegetables. There are nearly fifty species which attack the 

 grape vine, and their number is rapidly increasing. About 

 seventy-five species make their annual onset upon the apple 

 tree, and nearly an equal number may be found upon the plum, 

 pear, peach and cherry. Among our shade trees, over fifty 

 species infest the oak; twenty -five the elm; seventy-five the 

 walnut, and over one hundred species of insects prey upon the 

 pine. 



Indeed, we may reasonably calculate the annual loss in our 

 country alone, from noxious animals and the lower forms of 

 plants, such as rust, smut and mildew, as (at a low estimate) 

 not far from five hundred million dollars annually. Of this 

 amount, at least one-tenth, or fifty million dollars, could prob- 

 ably be saved by human exertions. ^ 



To save a portion of this annual loss of food stuffs, fruits and 

 lumber, should be th first object of farmers and gardeners. 

 When this saving is made, farming will become a profitable and 

 safe profession. But while a few are well informed as to the 

 losses sustained by injurious insects, and use means to ward off 

 their attacks, their efforts are constantly foiled by the negli- 

 gence of their neighbors. As illustrated so well by the history 

 of the incursions of the army worm and canker worm, it is only 

 by a combination between farmers and orchardists that these 

 and other pests can be kept under. The matter can be best 

 reached by legislation. We have fish and game laws;* why 

 should we not have an insect law? Why should we not frame 

 a law providing that farmers, and all owning a garden or 

 orchard, should cooperate in taking preventive measures 

 against injurious insects, such as early or late planting of 

 cereals, to avert the attacks of the wheat midge and Hessian 

 fly ; the burning of stubble in the autumn and spring to destroy 

 the joint worm ; the combined use of proper remedies against 



