VALUE OF BIRDS TO MAN. 35 



amount, Dr. Packard says that in all probability we annually 

 lose over two hundred million dollars from the attacks of 

 injurious insects. In the report of the Department of Agri- 

 culture for 1884 (p. 324) the losses occasioned by insects 

 injurious to agriculture in the United States, it is said, are 

 variously estimated at from three hundred million to four 

 hundred million dollars annually. 



Prof. C. V. Riley, in response to a letter of inquiry, in 



1890, stated that no very recent estimate of the injury done 

 by insects had been made ; but that he had estimated, some 

 time previously, that the injury done to crops in the United 

 States by insects exceeded three hundred million dollars 

 annually. 



Mr. James Fletcher, in his annual address as president of 

 the Society of Economic Entomologists, in Washington, in 



1891, stated that the agricultural products of the United 

 States were then estimated at about three billion, eight hun- 

 dred million dollars. It was believed that a sum equal to 

 about one-tenth of this amount, or three hundred and eighty 

 million dollars, was lost annually through the ravages of 

 injurious insects. 



It is evident that, in spite of the improved methods of 

 fighting insects, the aggregate loss from this source increases 

 in proportion as the land under cultivation increases. 



The most recent estimate of the loss occasioned by insect 

 injury in the United States which has come to my notice is 

 that of Dr. C. L. Marlatt, who by careful estimates approxi- 

 mates the percentage of loss to cereal products, hay, cotton, 

 tobacco, truck crops, sugars, fruits, forests, miscellaneous 

 crops, animal products, and products in storage. 



Dr. Marlatt attributes an annual loss of eighty million 

 dollars to the corn crop alone, and approximates the loss to 

 the wheat crop at one hundred million dollars each year. 

 The injury to the hay crop is estimated at five hundred and 

 thirty thousand dollars, while the codling moth alone is be- 

 lieved to injure fruit crops to the amount of twenty million 

 dollars annually. 



This statement, based on the value of farm products as 

 given in the reports of the Bureau of Statistics of the United 



