41 6 ENTOMOLOGY 



bugs to threads and letting them fly about. In China crickets are 

 matched against each other in fighting contests. 



Many other examples of insects beneficial, more or less, to man 

 could be given if space permitted. 



Doubtless many of us have now and then kept crickets or katydids in 

 cages because we liked to hear them sing; or have put fire flies in bottles 

 to watch them glow. 



The Japanese, with a national appreciation of nature which is 

 foreign to this country, are accustomed to do these things. Crickets 

 and katydids are sold on the streets, at prices equivalent to two to 

 fifteen cents each, much as flowers are sold here. 



As they have a cherry blossom season, they have also a fire fly 

 season, when it is the common custom to make visits to the country to 

 procure fire flies. Special trains are even run for these excursions. 



Annually the people of Gifu collect many thousands of fire flies, 

 which are sent to Tokyo and on a certain night are liberated for the 

 enjoyment of the emperor. 



As objects of scientific investigation insects are important, as no 

 entomologist will deny. They are even economically important in this 

 respect, for some of the principles of heredity, applicable to the breeding 

 of domesticated animals, have been worked out with the aid of insects, 

 particularly the pomace flies, Drosophila. 



Introduction and Spread of Injurious Insects. Many of our worst 

 insect pests were brought accidentally from Europe, notably the 

 Hessian fly, wheat midge, codling moth (probably), gipsy moth, 

 brown-tail moth, European corn borer, elm leaf beetle, leopard moth, 

 woolly apple aphid, cabbage butterfly, cabbage aphis, clover leaf 

 beetle, clover root borer, asparagus beetle, imported currant worm and 

 many cutworms; though few American species have obtained a foothold 

 in Europe, one of the few being the dreaded Phylloxera, which appeared 

 in France in 1863. 



The gipsy moth (Porthetria dispar), a native of Europe, where it is 

 at times a serious pest, was liberated in eastern Massachusetts in 1868, 

 and has spread over the eastern half of the state and into New Hamp- 

 shire, Maine and Connecticut, in spite of all efforts to control it. Small 

 infestations occur also in New York and Pennsylvania, and in July, 

 1920, a colony was found in New Jersey, where at present (1922) 410 

 square miles are infested. The cost of controlling this omnivorous pest 

 is enormous (see beyond). "The amount expended by the Bureau in 

 the campaign against the Gipsy Moth, including the appropriation for 



