n^JURIOUS INSECTS 



CHAPTER I 



Introduction 

 The Tax paid to Insects 



Insects exact of the human race an enormous toll m property injured 

 and destroyed. Unfortunately, in the interrelations of life, most things 

 that man desires, uses, or needs are the natural food of one or another 

 species of insect, usually of many. 



Specific examples of insect depredations give one some notion of the 

 total. Thus, in a hmited area in southern Indiana and near-by counties, 

 a species of cutworm attacking com caused a loss in one year, 1908, of 

 $200,000. The tobacco flea beetle in a single season, in Kentucky and 

 Tennessee, inflicted damage to the extent of $2,000,000. Injury 

 by a plant louse, the pea aphis, in two years of abundance, was esti- 

 mated at $7,000,000. In the Black Hills National Forest, a species of 

 beetle has destroyed timber representing at least 1,000,000,000 feet of 

 lumber. The annual price of the boll weevil to cotton growers is figured 

 at $15,000,000 to $30,000,000. Losses due to the cattle tick reach a 

 total of $40,000,000 each season. In a single year of excessive abun- 

 dance the Hessian fly exacted from our farmers an estimated total of 

 $100,000,000. In Ohio the yield of wheat in that one season dropped 

 from 15 bushels per acre to 6. The ravages of the chinch bug in our 

 crops of wheat and corn in the last 60 years are believed to reach the 

 sum of $350,000,000. 



Yet these examples are but one phase of the matter, representing a 

 few of the notable insect outbreaks that have been studied and esti- 



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