Alabama, ip 13. 59 



freely in these days that hundreds of millions mean no more to us 

 than hundreds of thousands did a few years ago. There are about 

 600 colleges in the United States today. Their buildings and endow- 

 ments have been centuries in accumulation. The value of the 

 college and university buildings is estimated at $260,000,000 and 

 the endowments at $219,000,000. If they should be destroyed to- 

 morrow — buildings and endowments — the insect tax of one year 

 would replace them and leave a balance sufficient to endow 32 new 

 universities in the sum of $10,000,000 each. 



We have in this country today about 20,000,000 school chil- 

 dren, and the cost of their education has become by far the heaviest 

 tax laid upon the surplus of the country, yet it costs more by many 

 millions to feed our insects than it does to educate our children. 

 If there is any way in which this vast and destructive tax upon 

 the national income can be prevented or stayed or resisted in any 

 appreciable measure it would seem to be the part of wisdom to 

 act without delay. 



For many years individuals, at their own expense, and volun- 

 tary societies and representatives of the civilized nations the world 

 over have studied and estimated the value of birds to the human 

 race. We call attention at this time to but a few of the estimates 

 made, and such as seem to be fair and reliable, but enough, we 

 think, to prove that in this country at least we have ruthlessly 

 disturbed, if not destroyed, one of nature's wisest and most valu- 

 able balances between the birds and their natural food, and it is 

 clear to those informed upon this subject that unless radical and 

 immediate measures are adopted to restore a sure, safe, and natural 

 equilibrium between insectivorous birds and their foods the time 

 will soon come when the annual loss caused by insects to agriculture 

 in this country alone will be counted in billions instead of millions 

 of dollars. 



Most insects, like the green leaf louse, or aphis, so destructive 

 to the hop industry and many other of our most valuable fruits 

 and vegetables, reproduce their kind at the rate of ten sextillion to 

 the pair in one season. This number means 40,000 for every 

 square inch of land that is above water. Placed in Indian file, 10 

 to the inch, it would take light, traveling at the rate of 180,000 

 miles per second, 2,500 years to reach the file leader. 



The potato bug is less fecund. One pair will reproduce from 

 fifty to sixty millions only in a season. The natural increase of one 



