Eights Report of tee State I ogist. k jG9 



tibns to the extenl of ;ii least one-half of their present magni- 

 tude. What an addition this would be to the national w< 

 and to individual well-being! 



How to Meet 



Turning now to the practical part, of my paper — how may 

 meet our insect foes? I will name some of the methods by 

 which this may be done. 



High Culture.— First and foremost, I would recommend high 

 culture. Just in proportion that the vigor and growth of a crop 

 is promoted, to the same extent there is given to it the ability to 

 resist and overcome the effects of insect attack. Wliile the 

 feeble plant succumbs, the vigorous one will flourish and mature 

 despite the drain upon it. It will have a resistant force to sus- 

 tain it, just as health and a well-developed body may exclude or 

 triumph over disease. And then, again, the weak, sickly, or 

 diseased plant, made so either through neglect of cultivation 

 or lack of needed fertilizing material, directly invites insect 

 attack. The peculiar odor that emanates from it when in 

 this condition, is at once detected by the insect, and serves 

 to draw it from distances that seem almost incredible. Insects, 

 that they may readily find the food-plants on which, they are 

 destined to feed and those upon which they are to deposit their 

 eggs for the continuance of their species, — as if in compensation 

 for a feeble, short range, and quite imperfect vision, have been 

 endowed with a sense of smell which, is marvellous in its acute- 

 ness, and is without parallel in any other class of the animal 

 world. It is believed by some entomologists that many of our 

 insect pests never make attack on healthy vegetation, but only 

 on that which is diseased; as if in the economy of nature they 

 were specially commissioned to hasten destruction and decay; 

 and among these they would place many of the bark-borers that 

 infest our fruit and shade trees, with which it seems almost hope- 

 less for us to contend. 



Clean Culture.— A. large proportion of our insect pests survive 

 the winter within such shelter as they may find in decaying wood, 

 sticks, boards, or rails lying on the ground. Dead vines, stalks 



