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gous growth, which was spared the agriculturist of pre- 

 vious generations. 



We cannot but think that our ancestors were possessed 

 of a veritable horticultural paradise, when we learn how 

 in bj^gone times apples grew sound and good without care, 

 strangers alike to scab, codlin moth, and curculio; how 

 luscious peaches were never attacked by worm or rot ; 

 how plums never knew the sting of the curculio ; how pears 

 had never found the way of growing dwafted and gnarly, 

 and how potatoes produced regularly, large, annual crops, 

 unaffected by Colorado beetle, blight and rot. 



At all events, the case is very different today. The 

 crop is not cultivated, that is, not injured by at least one 

 insect of fatal fungous, while the majority of the crops are 

 forced to maintain a struggle with several. That insects 

 harmful to crops have enormously increased both in species 

 and in numbers, is plainly manifest. What then, has ef- 

 fected the change ? 



Modern conditions have united to render this multipli- 

 cation of insects possible. 



The destruction of the forests has driven many species 

 of insects formerly supported within them, to the cultivated 

 fields to find subsistence. 



The massing of tilled crops within comparatively lim- 

 ited areas has greatly encouraged the rapid increase in the 

 insect world, for it is a natural law that the extent to 

 which any animal will reproduce itself is primarily depen- 

 dent upon the abundance and availability of its food sup- 

 plies, and obviously large continuous orchards of fruit 

 trees and immense fields of potatoes furnish ideal condi- 

 tions for insects preying upon fruit trees or potatoes, as 

 the case may be, to multiply their species in enormous 

 numbers, for the food is both ample in supply and easy of 

 access. The same is as true of other crops as it is of fruit 

 trees and potatoes. 



