CHAPTER THIRTEEN 



INSECT ENEMIES AND ALLIES 



The locust is fierce, and strong, and grim, 

 And a mailed man is afraid of him : 

 He comes like a winged shape of dread, 

 With his shielded back and his armed head, 

 And his double wings for hasty flight, 

 And a keen, unwearying appetite. 



MARY HOWITT 



SCIENTISTS have named not far from half a million Kinds of 

 kinds (species) of insects, and they estimate that the insecs 

 list will be about four times as long as it now is, when 

 all the different kinds in the world have been discovered. 

 Their numbers are greater than the numbers of all other 

 kinds of animal life together. 



Insects in the struggle for existence. There are Why their 

 several reasons why insects are able to keep alive in 

 such enormous numbers, (i) They escape easily from 

 enemies, such as birds, by reason of their small size, 

 their power of flight, and their protective coloring 

 which makes them hard to see. (2) They have a hard 

 (chitinous) covering which protects them from injuries 

 and from germs. (3) The change of form through 

 which insects pass allows them to spend a good deal of 

 their life in a protected place, as the caterpillar in the 

 cocoon, or the codling moth, during its larval stage, 

 within an apple. (4) They reproduce with enormous 

 rapidity. The eggs hatch quickly and the young soon 

 come to maturity, so that there may be many genera- 

 tions of some insects in a single season. The fly, for 

 example, may lay as many as one hundred and twenty 



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