A BOOK OF MONSTERS 



91 



THE pictures of monsters are por- 

 traits of creatures which are as 

 much the real inhabitants of the 

 world as we are, and have all the rights 

 of ownership that we have ; but, because 

 their own struggle for existence so often 

 crosses ours, many of them are our ene- 

 mies. Indeed, man's own real struggle 

 for the supremacy of the world is his 

 struggle to control these tiny monsters. 



The plague of the Middle Ages, which 

 spread like some mysterious supernat- 

 ural curse over Europe and carried off 

 millions of people, the yellow fever that 

 has haunted the coasts of South Amer- 

 ica, the malaria which has strewn the 

 tropics of the world with millions of 

 graves, have been caused by the activi- 

 ties of two monsters so universall]'' pres- 

 ent in our homes as to have become al- 

 most domesticated creatures — the flea 

 and the mosquito. During these last two 

 decades these have come under our con- 

 trol, and the flies which leave a colony of 

 germs at every footstep will not much 

 longer be tolerated ; indeed, every crea- 

 ture that bites and sucks our blood or 

 that crawls over our food and dishes has 

 been placed under suspicion. 



Man struggles against these tiny mon- 

 sters not only for his life and health, but 

 for his food as well. Almost every cul- 

 tivated plant has its enemy, and some of 

 them have many. The bugs alone, which 

 stick their beaks into all sorts of plants 

 to suck their juices, would starve man 

 out in one or two brief seasons if they in 

 turn were not held in check by enemies 

 of their own. The chinch-bug alone has 

 demonstrated its power to devastate the 

 wheat fields. The bark-beetles that girdle 

 square miles of forest trees, the moths 

 that destroy their foliage, the creatures 

 that burrow into the fruit and fruit trees, 

 the gall-forming flies that form galls on 

 the roots of the grape-vines, able to de- 

 stroy the revenues of a whole country, 

 the beetle which strips the potato of its 

 leaves, the one which infects with its 

 dirty jaws the melon vines of the South 

 and turns the melon patches brown — 

 these are a few of the vast array of our 

 enemies It would require a book much 

 larger than this one just to enumerate 

 those well known. 



It should make every American proud 

 to know that it is the American economic 

 entomologist who has, more than any 

 other, pushed his way into this field and 

 shown mankind how to fight these mon- 

 sters which destroy his food, his animals, 

 and himself. 



But all these fascinating little creatures 

 are not our enemies. We must not forget 

 that man has domesticated certain of the 

 insects, and that gigantic industries de- 

 pend upon them for their existence. 



The honey-bee furnished mankind with 

 sweets during the generations preceding 

 the discovery of the sugar-cane, and the 

 silk-worm furnishes still the most costly 

 raiment with which we clothe ourselves. 



The friends we have in the insect 

 world are those which destroy the pests 

 of our cultivated crops, like the Austra- 

 Han lady-bird beetle, which has been sent 

 from one counti-y to the other to keep in 

 check the fluted scale which is so injuri- 

 ous to the orange orchards, and the para- 

 sites of the gipsy-moth, which in Europe 

 helps to keep under control this plague 

 of our forest trees, must certainly be 

 counted as our friends.* 



Also they are our friends if, like the 

 spiders, they kill such monsters as suck 

 our blood or make our lives unsafe, or, 

 like the great hordes of wasps and hor- 

 nets, wage unending warfare against the 

 flies, but which, because they attack us 

 personally if we come too near their 

 nests, we kill on sight. Strangely enough, 

 it is often these same stinging insects 

 which help us by fertilizing the blossoms 

 of our fruit trees. Indeed, many plants 

 are so dependent on these little creatures 

 that they have lost the power of self- 

 fertilizing, and thousands of species of 

 trees and plants would become extinct in 

 a generation without their friendly aid. 



The ancestors of some of the creatures 

 pictured in "''The Book of Monsters" 

 were buried in the transparent amber of 

 the Baltic many thousands of years ago, 

 and the fossil remains of others date 

 back a million years or more ; but while 

 man has been developing his surround- 

 ings from the primitive ones of savagery 



* See article by Dr. L. O. Howard, entitled 

 "Explorers of a New Kind," printed on pages 

 38-67 of this Magazine. 



