58 STATE POMOLOGICAI, SOCIETY. 



INSECTS, BIRDS, AND FRUITS. 

 By Prof. Wm. L. Powers, Gardiner. 



In this day of codling moths, curcuHos, and trypetas success 

 in orcharding is quite as Hkely to depend upon a knowledge of 

 birds and insects, as upon skill in selecting and care in culti- 

 vating the best varieties of fruit. Ignorance of Nature's laws 

 in the animal kingdom may and often does bring to naught the 

 labor of him who sows, and trusts in God for the increase. He 

 who studies those laws will soon learn that the main effort of 

 individual life whether animal or vegetable is to reproduce its 

 kind. So potent is this function that the natural increase of any 

 one plant or animal, if unchecked by other plants or animals in 

 the struggle for existence, would in a few years cover the entire 

 land surface of the earth. In old countries which have long 

 been inhabited by agricultural communities, the various species 

 have had time to adjust themselves, and the balance of nature 

 has become established. 



The brown-tail moth has been known in Europe for three 

 hundred years, and yet we do not hear of any such widespread 

 devastation as now threatens our New England States. Its 

 natural enemies, bird and insect, with the little that man does, 

 are sufficient in the continental countries to hold this terrible 

 pest in check. 



The lands recently opened up to agriculture are the ones which 

 suffer most severely. Here in the United States we are con- 

 fronted by an irruption of vast hordes of injurious insects from 

 two causes : First, our westward expansion has brought our 

 growing crops into contact with native American insects, and 

 these, finding their original food plants destroyed by the clearing 

 of forests and the breaking up of the prairies, have turned to 

 the more succulent crops of the farmer and have become terrible 

 pests by migrating eastward and devouring the ever increasing 

 food supply ; such are the cutworms, chinch bugs, and Colorado 

 potato beetle ; secondly, injurious insects constantly being intro- 

 duced from foreign lands find here a paradise in which to multi- 

 ply. Having escaped their natural enemies they find abundance 

 of food in a land where the insect eating birds and animals have 

 been wantonly and wickedly destroyed by men. 



