138 NATURE STUDY REVIEW [9 :5— May, 1913 



and physical directors permit their men who play in hard contests 

 to use tobacco? Would it help the looks of ladies if they used 

 tobacco as some men do? Why is spitting forbidden in public 

 places by the laws of many states? Who find it the most diffi- 

 cult to keep such a law? People who have not gotten their sys- 

 tems used to the poison of tobacco, find tobacco smoke very 

 offensive. Is it fair to them to compel them to endure the sick- 

 ening odor of tobacco? 



Some of the economic gains that would come if nobody in 

 America used tobacco, will appear from the illustration. 



Gommon Insects and Birds of the Farm^ 



Chas. a. Hart. 



There are many good insects and a great many bad ones. 

 Among the good ones we would name the honey-bee which makes 

 food for us and the bumble-bee, which causes red clover seed to 

 develop. You would not have so much red clover without the 

 bumble-bee which carries pollen from one flower to the other. 

 We also have the lady-bird which eats bad insects such as the 

 very injurious plant lice or apluds. And then there are a great 

 many other good insects that carry pollen and make it possible 

 to raise fine plums, apples, pears and other fruits, which we 

 couldn't raise so well without insects to spread the pollen. There 

 are many other good insects which you may think are harmful. 

 For example: 



How many know the dragon fly? Perhaps you have heard 

 him called ''snake doctor" or **snake feeder." Now, when I was 

 a little boy I used to think, when I saw a dragon fly that there 

 must be a snake around somewhere. It isn't a snake doctor or 

 a snake feeder either. This is all superstition. Down in the 

 southland they have some superstitions just about as bad as this 

 one of ours. They think that it sews up mules' ears, and other 

 people think it sews up the mouths of boys and girls who tell bad 

 stories. It may be that this is true — or perhaps it ought to be 

 true. If I had to name him, I would name him "mosquito hawk," 

 because he eats mosquitoes. He has six legs and he forms them 

 into a little basket. He can fly through the air far more rapidly 

 than other insects, and he catches the mosquitoes, moths and flies 

 in large numbers and eats them. We wouldn't have malaria and 

 chills without mosquitoes. And so I should call him a good 

 insect and I like to call him ''mosquito hawk." 



But we have a great many bad insects — the white grub or 

 grub worm produced by the May beetle, the wire worm, the army 



*This article is one of the talks given in rural communities from the Educational 

 Trolley Train of the University of Illinois. 



