INJURIOUS INSECTS 
CHAPTER I 
INTRODUCTION 
The Tax paid to Insects 
Insects exact of the humanrace an enormous toll in property injured 
and destroyed. Unfortunately, in the interrelations of life, most things 
that man desires, uses, or needs are the natural food of one or another 
species of insect, usually of many. 
Specific examples of insect depredations give one some notion of the 
total. Thus, in a limited area in southern Indiana and near-by counties, 
a species of cutworm attacking corn caused a loss in one year, 1908, of 
$200,000. The tobacco flea beetle in a single season, in Kentucky and 
Tennessee, inflicted damage to the extent of $2,000,000. Injury 
by a plant louse, the pea aphis, in two years of abundance, was esti- 
mated at $7,000,000. In the Black Hills National Forest, a species of 
beetle has destroyed timber representing at least 1,000,000,000 feet of 
lumber. The annual price of the boll weevil to cotton growers is figured 
at $15,000,000 to $30,000,000. Losses due to the cattle tick reach a 
total of $40,000,000 each season. In a single year of excessive abun- 
dance the Hessian fly exacted from our farmers an estimated total of 
$100,000,000. In Ohio the yield of wheat in that one season dropped 
from 15 bushels per acre to 6. The ravages of the chinch bug in our 
crops of wheat and corn in the last 60 years are believed to reach the 
sum of $350,000,000. 
Yet these examples are but one phase of the matter, representing a 
few of the notable insect outbreaks that have been studied and esti- 
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