ARACHNIDA AND MYEIAPODA 125 



States in studying injurious insects and devising methods 

 for preventing such enormous losses to American farmers. 

 Massachusetts spent more than a million dollars in trying 

 to exterminate the gypsy moth, and Congress has just 

 appropriated $250,000 to fight the boll-weevil and other 

 troubles in southern cotton fields. Farmers are trying to 

 feed to insects over two thousand tons of Paris green 

 annually in the United States. 



The statistics for New York state also offer some inter- 

 esting comparisons along this line. The total value of all 

 farm and forest crops, excluding animal products, in New 

 York, in 1899, was $150,000,000, and the one tenth that the 

 insects got was worth $15,000,000. It may seem incredible 

 that it costs such a sum to feed New York's injurious 

 insects every year, but it is an average of only $66 for each 

 of the 227,000 farms in the state; and there are few farms 

 where the crops are not lessened more than this amount 

 by insects. It is admitted that the codling moth alone 

 ruins $3,000,000 worth of apples and pears yearly in the 

 state, and in 1901 the Hessian fly took half of New York's 

 wheat crop, thus robbing the farmers of $3,500,000. 



8. ARACHNIDA AND MYRIAPODA 



The Arachnida, including the spiders, scorpions, and 

 mites, are distinguished from other arthropods by the pres- 

 ence of four pairs of legs, the division of the body into two 

 parts, called cephalo-thorax and abdomen, and the absence 

 of antennae. From two to six pairs of eyes are just visible 

 on the upper part of the forehead. No ears have been 



