Why Protect the Birds? 



301 



marvelous. Reaumer, in his history of the insects, estimates 

 that one aphis may be the progenitor of not less than 5,- 

 904,900,000 during the few weeks of her existence. Theo- 

 dore Wood, in his book on Our Insect Enemies, says : "It 

 may seem a widely and extravagant and unjustifiable state- 

 ment if we say that but for certain opposing agencies the aphis 

 would overrun the entire world ; that it would leave scarcely 

 a green leaf upon the earth, and that it would cause such 

 terrible devastation that all terrestial life would wholly dis- 

 appear, and the globe become one vast desert incapable of sup- 

 porting animation, and utterly without living beings of any 

 kind. Still more impossible would it appear were we to state 

 that this ruin and devastation would be the outcome, not of 

 many centuries of gradual increase, but of only a few short 

 months. Incredible as the assertion may seem, however, such 

 results are no more than must logically follow if the aphis 

 should be allowed to remain perfectly unmolested during the 

 period of but a single year." And this is only one of these 

 destructive insect pests with which we must contend. 



Indeed, there are pestiverous and destructive insect pests 

 for every condition, place and plant about us. Forlnstance, 

 in the air, by day, we have flies, butterflies, wasps, moths and 

 winged ants, and at night moths, mosquitoes, bugs and beetles. 

 Upon our shrubs and small fruits we have slugs, leaf hoppers, 

 flea beetles, rose chafers, climbing cutworms and caterpillars. 

 In our gardens we have cutworms, cabbage worms, root mag- 

 gots, cucumber, pea and bean weevils and squash bugs. In 

 our orchards we have borers, codling moths, bark lice, plant 

 lice, cankerworms and leaf caterpillars. In our meadows we 

 have grasshoppers, cut worms, army worms, crane flies, white 

 grubs and root borers. In our corn and wheat fields, we have 

 wire worms, ball worms, root worms, Hessian flies, ants and 

 chinch bugs. In our forests we have plant lice, bark lice, trunk 

 borers and leaf caterpillars. In our marshes, ponds and 

 streams, we have water beetles, water bugs, mosquitoes and 

 May flies. 



Professor C. R. Marlatt, Assistant Etimologist in charge 

 of the experimental field work of the United States Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, has prepared a report for the Department, 



