VALUE OF BIRDS TO MAN. 35 
amount, Dr. Packard says that in all probability we annually 
lose over two hundred million dollars from the attacks of 
injurious insects. In the report of the Department of Agri- 
culture for 1884 (p. 324) theelosses occasioned by insects 
injurious to agriculture in the United States, it is said, are 
variously estimated at from three hundred million to four 
hundred million dollars annually. 
Prof. C. V. Riley, in response to a letter of inquiry, in 
1890, stated that no very recent estimate of the injury done 
by insects had been made; but that he had estimated, some 
time previously, that the injury done to crops in the United 
States by insects exceeded three hundred million, dollars 
annually. 
Dr. James Fletcher, in his annual address as president of 
the Society of Economic Entomologists, in Washington, in 
1891, stated that the agricultural products of the United_ 
States were then estimated at about three billion, eight hun- 
dred million dollars. It was believed that a sum equal to 
about one-tenth of this amount, or three hundred and eighty 
million dollars, was lost annually through the ravages of 
injurious insects. 
It is evident that, in spite of the improved methods of 
fighting insects, the aggregate loss from this source increases 
in proportion as the land under cultivation increases. 
The most recent estimate of the loss occasioned by insect 
injury in the United States which has come to my notice is 
that of Dr. C. L. Marlatt, who by careful estimates approxi- 
mates the percentage of loss to cereal products, hay, cotton, 
tobacco, truck crops, sugars, fruits, forests, miscellaneous 
crops, animal products, and products in storage. 
Dr. Marlatt attributes an annual loss of eighty million 
dollars to the corn crop alone, and approximates the loss to 
the wheat crop at one hundred million dollars each year. 
The injury to the hay crop is estimated at five hundred and 
thirty thousand dollars, while the codling moth alone is be- 
lieved to injure fruit crops to the amount of twenty million 
dollars annually. 
This statement, based on the value of farm products as 
given in the reports of the Bureau of Statistics of the United 
