130 HOW TO LIVE IN THE COUNTRY 



food, our raiment, and are able to travel from place 

 to place. Not a little of the poetry of our lives, 

 the content and the joy as well, is due to these vege- 

 table and animal allies. 



At the same time it must be allowed that the vege- 

 table and the animal kingdom alike furnish us rivals 

 that sometimes threaten our very existence. If there 

 is any one thing in the vegetable world got without 

 a struggle, I do not know what it is. Roses, apples, 

 pears, cherries, potatoes, oranges, wheat, corn, it is 

 the same thing everywhere. 



I have heard it said that in the good old times 

 all you had to do was to sow or plant, and then reap 

 the finest wheat and gather the most perfect apples. 

 That is nonsense, for during the past sixty years I 

 have seen the growing of wheat driven out of New 

 York State by an insignificant insect, and even with 

 all those years I cannot count back of the codling 

 moth. This trifling but pretty insect has in that time 

 put hundreds of millions of bushels of apples into 

 the waste heap. This is a sorry story to tell of the 

 mastery of man, as compared with an insect. But 

 meanwhile it is this very insect, with a few more, 

 that has compelled us to establish agricultural col- 

 leges, has caused the birth of new sciences, and called 

 out our real value in a mighty struggle to hold our 

 own. 



The whole year through the fruit grower and the 

 general farmer have a continual battle to fight. It 

 begins early in the spring and does not quite end with 



