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ing to protect and foster the useful birds that were designed by the 

 Almighty to dispose of the surplus insect production, pursue them 

 with the gun and poison until the larger useful species are nearly 

 if not quite extinct. The wild turkey, grouse, the prairie chickens, 

 the wild pigeons, ducks and geese, the plovers, woodpeckers, 

 blackbirds, larks, robins and all birds which are "good for food" are 

 slaughtered relentlessly, even at the season when the callow young 

 must perish from starvation if deprived of parental care. The 

 grasshopper-eating buzzards and all hawks and owls are shot at 

 sight anywhere and everj'where by all classes of people. Many 

 States offer bounties on the heads of supposed noxious birds with- 

 out being aware that such a policy is undermining the agricultural 

 interests. Small birds are hunted for their feathers; "birds egg- 

 ing " boys increase apace ; a million cats forage the fields and woods ; 

 fashion calls for millions of birds to deck the ladies' garments, and 

 the number of girls requiring such decorations yearly increases. In 

 the meantime insects increase and run riot. The locust, the chinch 

 bug, the army worm, the codling moth, the plum curculio, the 

 cabbage butterfly, the boll worm, the asparagus beetle, the canker 

 worms, bugs, beetles, aphids, borers, grasshoppers and other insects 

 galore destroy the ripening grain, sap the lusty fruit tree, devour 

 its leaves, despoil the garden, field and forest and render the life 

 of the successful farmer one continual battle with his insect foes. 

 During the locust invasions in the west hundreds of small farmers 

 lost their all, and becoming destitute, were forced to leave all they 

 possessed and remove to more favored lands. 



In 1854 the loss occasioned in New York State by the wheat 

 midge {Diplosis tritici, Kirby) was in excess of fifteen million 

 dollars. (Estimate given by Dr. Fitch, State Entomologist.) 

 The value of wheat and corn destroyed in Illinois in 1864 by the 

 chinch bug (Blissus le^icopterus, Say) is estimated at seventy- 

 three million dollars. (First Annual Report of Injurious and Other 

 Insects of New York State, by Dr. J. A. Lintner, Albany, 1882, 

 p. 71.) The loss in the four States of Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and 

 Missouri during 1874 from the ravages of the Rocky Mountain locust 

 is estimated at one hundred million dollars (First Report U. S. 

 Entomological Commission, 1877, p. 121) ; while the annual loss 

 caused by insects in this country is said to be from three to four 

 millions. (Report U. S. Department of Agriculture, 1884, p. 324.) 

 What wonder then that the farmer is taking desperate means to 

 protect his crops? What wonder that deadly poisons disguised as 

 insecticides are scattei*ed by the ton over the foliage of many of 

 our most important food crops, and that the experiment stations 

 are continually searching for means to quell the annual or period- 



