No. 4.] INSECTICIDES AND FUNGICIDES. 193 



INSECTICIDES AND FUNGICIDES, AND THEIR PEACTI- 



CAL APPLICATION. 



BY PROF. S. T. MAYNAKD OF AMHERST. 



In the good old times we are told that all the farmer or 

 gardener had to do was to tickle the soil a little and it would 

 laugh with an abundant harvest, unmolested by insect or 

 fungous attack. This is the early history of all new 

 countries. At first, in the virgin soil all crops grow with 

 little labor, but sooner or later insect and fungous pests 

 appear, and the cultivator of the soil must contest his right 

 to the crop he grows, or move on to other new fields. As 

 areas of any crop increase, the food supply for insects and 

 fungi being more abundant, these pests increase ; and there 

 is hardly a crop that we grow that we do not have to wage 

 prompt and earnest war to save from destruction. 



It is claimed by the Bureau of Entomology of the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture that the injury from insects to all crops 

 in the United States will reach $400,000,000 in a single 

 year. But this is not the only loss to which the farmer is 

 subject. It is estimated that the loss to our apple crop from 

 fungous pests in a single year will amount to more than 

 110,000,000, to the pear and plum more than $50,000,000, 

 to the grape $100,000,000 ; and so all along the line, in- 

 cluding hay, grain, small fruits, vegetables and flowering 

 plants, we could figure up almost inconceivable losses, until 

 the amount might exceed that from insect injury. 



At first a new pest increases at such a rapid rate that it 

 seems to defy known remedies ; but as the habits of the 

 destroying insect or the nature of the fungus is more fully 

 understood, we learn how the pest can be destroyed or the 

 crop in some way protected from injury. Great progress 

 has been made in the past few years in the knowledge of 



