Eighth Report of the State Entomologist. 265 



And yet it is but a plant-louse, one of the smallest of Lie kind, 

 and a mere dot — a microscopic object in several of its sfc 



The diminutive size of the insect dors not permit his exdnsion 

 from your crops by the ordinary means that give protection from 

 the incursion of domestic animals that at times break their inclos- 

 ures and invade your fields, although the injuries wrought by the 

 latter may hardly admit of comparison with those caused by 

 the former. True, ditches are sometimes dug and barriers built 

 by western farmers to stay the marches of the army-worm and the 

 chinch-bug in seasons of their excessive abundance, and valuable 

 crops have been, by these means, rescued from threatened destruc- 

 tion. But, as a rule, the armies of destructive insects which spring 

 out of the ground or drop upon you as if from the skies, must be 

 fought by methods which are only to be learned from careful and 

 continued study of the secret operations and wily ways of the 

 species with which you have to contend. 



We err when we regard all insects as small, notwithstanding 

 that one of the definitions given by Webster of an insect is 

 ^'something small or contemptible." But our best lexicogra- 

 phers are sometimes open to just criticism, as, for example, when 

 Dr. Johnson has given as a definition of net work lest its meaning 

 might not be perfectly clear to the simple-minded — "anything 

 reticulated or decussated at equal distances with interstices 

 between the intersections." True, the insect is small in compari- 

 son with our domestic animals and most of the mammals, yet there 

 are large insects as well as small, for we have gradations among 

 them not less marked than in other classes of animated nature. 

 It has been computed that the average size in the animal king- 

 dom — with the smallest known protozoan at one end of the 

 line and the flat-back whale of the Pacific coast with its 

 ninety-five feet of length and 294,000 pounds of weight, at the 

 other, is to be found in the common house-fly. Muxca domestica. 

 All insects exceeding this in size may properlv be called large; 

 those only that are less in size, small. Does this seem surprising? 

 Remember that there lies a vast world of living beings, ilie 

 limit of which is not yet defined, which the unaided eye does 

 not see, and which the microscope must call up to our wonder 

 ::4 



