397 



If it should prove to be such a case it will be, I think, the first one reported in this 

 country. — [F. W. Higgins. M. D., Nos. 8 and 9 Wallace Building, Cortland, New York, 

 March 14, 1891. 



Reply. — * * * These specimens are of great interest, although they are not 

 sutficiently advanced to enable us to determine the species with certainty. In fact 

 this can only be done by rearing the adult fly. A careful examination, however, 

 leads me to believe that they belong to the genus Sarcophaga, or, at all events, to 

 some closely allied genus of the family Sarcoi^hagidie. These insects are ordinarily 

 called Flesh Flies. There is a European species known as Sarcophaga wohlfarti, 

 which has been known to occur in a similar way in Russia, while species of the 

 closely allied genus SarcopMla have been known to infest the ears, nose, and wounds 

 of man and other animals. 



You will find a general summary of the subject of Myiasis or pseudo-parasitism of 

 the Diptera in man, in a paper by Hugo Suuima, A. M.,M. D., in the April, May, 

 and June, 1889, numbers of the St. Louis Medical and Surgical Journal. The April 

 number sums up the hitherto recorded cases with which the author was familiar; 

 article 2 contains the classification of these cases and additional records, with an 

 account of two recent cases of nasal parasitism, and the June number contains the 

 clinical history of the trouble. Nearly all the cases in which Sarcophaga is concerned 

 have been parasitism of the nose or ears, or of wounds, while intestinal parasitism is 

 in general due to the larvw of flies of other families, principally Anthorayiida-, which 

 have presumably entered the patient with spoiled vegetables, eaten raw, as in salads. 

 The fact that your patient was a child of 18 months probably precluded the possi- 

 bility of this method of entrance, and a more jtlausible explanation would seem to be 

 that the female fly deposited her living larvie in the mouth of the child while it was 

 sleeping. Further facts with which we are not familiar may, however, contradict 

 the possibility of this method. — [March 18, 1891.] 



Economic Value of the Study of Insects. 



Can you help me to any literature or to references to any literature where I can 

 find or work up some terse statements of the value to the community of, for instance, 

 the study of the life history of parasites of animals and vegetable life ; the saving in 

 dollars and cents (the most forceful showing to the average man) of crops and herds 

 b\ or through such investigations. I have heard business men of good intelligence 

 make sharp criticism of the Government for making appropriations of money for your 

 Commission. I have met this by the bald statement that it had paid for itself many 

 thousand fold in the discovery and promulgation of means and methods of saving 

 crops of enormous value from destruction by parasites or other enemies. 



What I want is authenticated facts and figures to back up my statement. — [Dan. 

 Humphrey, M. D., Lawrence, Massachusetts, February 26, 1891. 



Reply. — * * * xhe only facts that can be given relate to the destruction occa- 

 sioned by insect attacks. No very recent estimates of the loss arising from insect 

 ravages have been made, but some of the older estimates are here given. Twenty- 

 five years ago B. D. Walsh, the entomologist of Illinois, estimated the loss from this 

 source at from $200,000,000 to $300,000,000 per annum. The great increase in acre- 

 age of crops and orchards since that date has been attended, of course, with a cor- 

 responding increase in destructiveness ; but methods of prevention and remedies have 

 so multiplied and improved that the ratio of loss has greatly decreased. Fitch, then 

 New York State entomologist, estimated the damage to the wheat crop of that State 

 in the year 1854 by the Wheat-midge at $15,000,000, The loss to wheat and corn on 

 account of the ravages of the Chinch Bug in the State of Illinois alone in 1867 

 was estimated at $73,000,000. The loss occasioned in 1874 to corn, vegetables, and 

 other crops by the Rocky Mountain Locust in the States of Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, 

 and Missouri were estimated by Riley, from carefully collected data, at 8100,000,000, 

 to say nothing of the indirect loss by stoppage of business and other enterprises, which 

 would probably increase the total loss to the neighborhood of about $200,000,000. 



