ANIMAL LIFE IN OKLAHOMA. 2'i 



figures. The inconyeiiience and suffering resulting directly or indirectly 

 from the housefly and the diseases which it spreads represent an eco- 

 nomic loss that can scarcely be overestimated. Forests in all parts of 

 the State are being weakened by the ravages of insect pests, and it is a 

 common sight to see orchards destroyed and turned into cultivated fields, 

 because the farmers could not compete sucesisfully with the hordes of 

 pests that find an easy food supply in the young fruit trees. Those people 

 who were in the State in 1907 remember well how the greenbugs came 

 early in the spring and settled like dust over the wheat fields. They 

 remained until harvest time and destroyed about twenty percent of the 

 wheat crop in Oklahoma. The destruction and waste occasioned by 

 insects each year in this State amounts to more than $40,000,000. This 

 is an economic waste that in time can be and must be controlled. 

 Before the coming of the settlere there were no such things as insect 

 plagues, but man has entirely upset the balance of Nature, and hajs made 

 possible the unlimited production of these pests by killing or driving 

 away their natural enemies, and providing in the cultivated crops a food 

 supply that would not be possible in the wild order of things. Insects 

 can be checked and reduced to proportions where they can inflict little 

 harm. The United States Department of Agriculture has already pro- 

 vided and tested the methods, but one man working alone cannot do it;, 

 a county alone cannot, but the whole State working as an organized unit 

 can, if it will, arouse itself, and by scientific methods strike forever 

 from the ledger this annual waste of millions. 



SUMMARY. 



Communities in their regard for animal life undergo the usual 

 cycle of development. There are at first the boyhood days, when the primi- 

 tive instincts to kill and destroy are dominant, and indiscriminate 

 slaughter is the order of the day. Buffaloes are shot from car windows, 

 fish ponds are dynamited during spawning seasons, and song birds are 

 sacrificed by the hundreds for rifle practice. We have now, happily, 

 passed this barbarous age and are living in the young manhood period 

 when some prudence is exercised and some restrictions imposed, but 

 when the spirit of carelessness and indifference prevents the expression of 

 some of the noblest impulses, and keeps us inactive even after we know 

 the truth and have sensed our responsibilities. Let us hope that this 

 State is soon to emerge into the period of mature manhood, characterized 

 by a deep sense of our obligation to wild life, and a resolute determina- 

 ition to make refparatdon, as far as possible, for the bluudens of the 

 past, by preserving and increasing the wild things that yet remain, and 

 to pass them on undiminished to the future generations. 



