VALUE OF BIRDS TO MAN. 33 
In 1856, in Livingston County, New York, two thousand 
acres on flats which would have yielded thirty bushels of 
wheat per acre were not harvested because of the destruc- 
tive work of this insect.} 
Dr. C. L. Marlatt, of the Bureau of Entomology of the 
United States Department of Agriculture, who has made 
careful calculations of the loss still 
occasioned by the Hessian fly ( Cecédo- 
mya destructor) in the wheat-growing 
States, says that in comparatively few 
years does it cause a loss of less than 
ten per cent. of the crop. On the val- 
uation of the crop of 1904 this would 
amount to over fifty million dollars. 
Dr. Marlatt states that in the year 1900 
the loss in the wheat-growing States Fite. ek Seem fy. 
from this tiny midge undoubtedly ap- eons times: nat: 
proached one hundred million dollars.? 
The chinch bug (Bilissus leucopterus) attacks many staple 
crops, and has been a seriously destructive pest in the 
Mississippi valley States for many years, where it injures 
chiefly wheat and corn. Dr. Shimer in his notes on this 
insect estimates the loss caused by it in the Mississippi 
valley in 1864 at one hundred million dollars,? while Dr. 
Riley gives the loss in that year as seventy-three million 
dollars in Illinois alone. These are only a few of the 
extreme losses. Year after year the injuries from the 
depredations of this bug have amounted to many millions 
of dollars. 
The cotton worm (Alabama argillacea) has been known 
as a serious pest to the cotton crop for more than a century. 
The average loss in the cotton States from this caterpillar 
1 First Annual Report on the Injurious and Other Insects of the State of New 
York, by J. A. Lintner, 1882, p. 6. 
? The Annual Loss occasioned by Destructive Insects in the United States, by ~ 
C.L. Marlatt. Yearbook, United States Department of Agriculture, 1904, p. 467. 
5 Report on the Rocky Mountain Locust, by A. 8. Packard. Ninth Annual 
Report of the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, 
1875, p. 697. 
4 First Annual Report on the Injurious and Other Insects of the State of New 
York, by J. A. Lintner, 1882, p. 7. 
