VALUE OF BIRDS TO MAN. 33 



Iii 1856, in Livingston County, New York, two thousand 

 acres on flats which would have yielded, thirty bushels of 

 wheat per acre were not harvested because of the destruc- 

 tive work of this insect. 1 



Dr. C. L. Marlatt, of the Bureau of Entomology of the 

 United States Department of Agriculture, who has made 

 careful calculations of the loss still 

 occasioned by the Hessian fly (Cecido- 

 myia destructor) in the wheat-growing 

 States, says that in comparatively few 

 years does it cause a loss of less than 

 ten per cent, of the crop. On the val- 

 uation of the crop of 1904 this would 

 amount to over fifty million dollars. 

 Dr. Marlatt states that in the year 1900 

 the loss in the wheat-growing States F ig. le.-iiess'ian fly . 

 from this tiny midge undoubtedly ap- About twelve times nat- 

 proached one hundred million dollars. 2 



The chinch bug (Blissus leucopterus) attacks many staple 

 crops, and has been a seriously destructive pest in the 

 Mississippi valley States for many years, where it injures 

 chiefly wheat and corn. Dr. Shinier in his notes on this 

 insect estimates the loss caused by it in the Mississippi 

 valley in 1864 at one hundred million dollars, 3 while Dr. 

 Riley gives the loss in that year as seventy-three million 

 dollars in Illinois alone. 4 These are only a few of the 

 extreme losses. Year after year the injuries from the 

 depredations of this bug have amounted to many millions 

 of dollars. 



The cotton worm (Alabama argillacea) has been known 

 as a serious pest to the cotton crop for more than a century. 

 The average loss in the cotton States from this caterpillar 



1 First Annual Report on the Injurious and Other Insects of the State of New 

 York, by J. A. Lintner, 1882, p. 6. 



2 The Annual Loss occasioned by Destructive Insects in the United States, by 

 C. L. Marlatt. Yearbook, United States Department of Agriculture, 1904, p. 467. 



3 Report on the Rocky Mountain Locust, by A. S. Packard. Ninth Annual 

 Report of the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, 

 1875, p. 697. 



4 First Annual Report on the Injurious and Other Insects of the State of New 

 York, by J. A. Lintner, 1882, p. 7. 



