568 THE ECONOMIC STATUS OF INSECTS AS A CLASS. 



CONCLUSION. 



And now the question is : Are we any nearer the answer to the exact 

 determination of the economic value of the Class than we were at the 

 start? We have, perhaps, gained by this summary a clearer idea of 

 the economic importance of insects, and possibly it may appear by tins 

 contrasting method that the benefits derived from them entirely offset 

 their injuries ; but we can not, in our present stage of enlightenment 

 (and I say it with all reverence), complacently and piously adopt, with 

 the good old rector of Barham, the view that insects, with all the lower 

 animals, were created for man's benefit, God permitting occasional 

 injuries, to use Kirby's words, " not merely with punitive views, but 

 also to show us what mighty effects He caii produce by instruments so 

 insignificant, thus calling on us to glorify His power, wisdom, and 

 goodness." 



Contrast with this view the view of Professor Bailey, in one of his 

 charming essays in the volume entitled The Survival of the Unlike : 

 " We are now prepared to admit that this whole question of enemy and 

 friend is a relative one, and does not depend upon right and wrong, 

 but simply upon our own relationships to the given animals and plants. 

 An insect which eats our potatoes is an enemy because we want the 

 potatoes, too ; the insect has as much right to the potatoes as we have. 

 He is pressed by the common necessity of maintaining himself, and 

 there is every evidence that the potato was made as much for the insect 

 as for human kind. Dame Nature is quite as much interested in the 

 insect as in man. ; What a pretty bug ! ' she exclaims ; ' send him over 

 to Smith's potato patch.' But a bug which eats this insect is benefi- 

 ficial; that is, he is beneficial to man, not to the insect. Thus every- 

 thing in nature is a benefit to something and an injury to something; 

 and every time that conditions of life are modified the relation ships 

 readjust themselves." 



In these words Bailey, with his accustomed felicity, has expressed 

 the situation admirably. Man is but one of the forms of life struggling 

 for existence, at continual warfare with surrounding forms; but by 

 virtue of his surpassing intelligence — itself as gradually evolved as 

 have been the physical characteristics of any given species — he has 

 overrun the earth, has accommodated himself to the most unnatural 

 environments; he has dominated all other species in nature; he has 

 turned to his own uses and encouraged or hastened the evolution of 

 species useful to him or of useful qualities in such species; he has wiped 

 out of existence certain inimical forms and is gaining the control of 

 others. He is the dominant type, and types whose existence and meth- 

 ods of life are opposed to his interests are being pushed to the wall. 

 It is the culmination of a history which has rnany times repeated itself 

 in past ages. The struggle of other forms of life to accommodate 

 themselves to the conditions brought about by the rapid development 



