INTRODUCTION. XXVII 
what they like best. It is much the same as if a banquet for a thousand men were 
served every day for half a dozen. They could taste here and there, and would make 
little impression on the whole supply. It is so with the birds because they are so few, 
but if they were protected till the bird population began to press upon their means of 
subsistence, they would not be so fastidious, and would be glad to get any kind of bug 
or worm, and would snap up every one that showed his head. 
“Besides their utility as insect destroyers, birds are among the most interesting 
and companionable of all living creatures. Few people in this country have any inti- 
mate acquaintance with birds and their ways, but those who have studied them in 
close and pleasant relations know that they have a great deal of individual character 
and a wonderful and most interesting kind of intelligence. Their music, too, often 
peculiarly sweet and fascinating, with a mysterious and indefinable quality—a kind of 
divine suggestiveness—appeals strongly to the higher and gentler elements of our 
nature. But few persons now hear this music, because the birds that remain are so 
hunted, terrified, and tormented that they rarely feel like singing. If the children and 
young people of the country were instructed in their homes, schools, and churches 
regarding man’s relation to the earth on which he lives, and his responsibility for the 
care and ordering of it and its products, not only would there be a saving every vear 
of millions of dollars in the crops of our farms, gardens, orchards, and vineyards, which 
are now destroyed by insects, but life would soon be much more interesting to the 
wiser race of men and women.” 
That injurious insects are on the increase and are becoming more destructive to 
the crops of the garden, orchard, and field, than they used to be, are facts verified by 
gardeners, horticulturists, and farmers in all parts of our country. Not a year passes 
without bitter complaints being uttered of the ravages of cut-worms, wire-worms, 
corn-worms, tent-caterpillars, codling moths (apple-worms), the many different curculios, 
army-worms, borers, chinch-bugs, Hessian flies, and thousands of other injurious insects, 
and the loss from these pests is simply beyond calculation. It was once no trouble to 
raise fruits of all kinds free from knots, spots, and other defects, but now this is no 
longer the case. An apple without a worm is now almost an exception. The orchard 
is full of insects, and unless they are destroyed, fruit can not be profitably raised. The 
tent-caterpillar, so troublesome of late years, was never known to do serious harm to 
orchards half a century ago. Now the orchards must be carefully watched ‘to keep this 
terrible enemy in check. The apple is also greatly injured by the curculio. Sometimes 
out of hundreds of barrels of apples only a few of perfection can be found, the rest 
being full of knots and specks, the result of the bite of the curculio. The curculio is 
the greatest enemy of the plum and peach orchards, and these excellent and popular 
fruits are no longer easily raised. To briefly describe all the worst insects and the 
mischief they do, would take up many pages of this book. 
There is a cause why insects do more mischief now than in former years, and 
the fruit-growers and farmers should loose no time in hunting it up and removing it if 
possible. There is nothing new or unusual about insects multiplying so rapidly, for 
they always did when their increase was not checked in some way, but what checks 
existed in the early settlement of the country that are out of the way now? There can 
