THE INSECTS OF THE PAST YEAR AND 

 PROGRESS IN INSECT STUDIES 



By J. A. Lintster, Ph. D. 

 [Read before the Albany Institute April 15, 1890.] 



The paper that I am about to read was read before the New York 

 State Agricultural Society at its annual meeting in January last. Our 

 Secretary has asked me to repeat it to the Institute at this time. I 

 do so somewhat reluctantly, knowing that but few, if any, of you 

 have any special interest in the study of insects or in the story of their 

 habits. I feel, however, that in consideration of the amount of injury 

 that insects inflict upon our principal crops, at times to the extent of 

 materially enhancing the cost of living, that their study is one which 

 directly concerns every member of the community; while the intelli- 

 gent person should regard it as his duty to inform himself of the 

 progress being made in the department known as economic ento- 

 mology, which at the present time is contributing so largely to 

 the agricultural interests of our country. 



I have the privilege of again recording the exemption of the crops 

 of the State from any widespread serious insect attack, and a mitiga- 

 tion of some of the more formidable ones of preceding years. In- 

 juries to cereal crops have been remarkably few and local. While 

 in several of the other States, as notably in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana 

 and Illinois, the grain aphis, Siphonophora avenm (Fabr.) has been 

 unusually destructive to wheat, oats and other of the grains, and it 

 has also appeared in injurious numbers in portions of New Jersey and 

 Pennsylvania, in not a single instance has injury from it been brought 

 to my knowledge within our own State. Its ravages in the year 1861 

 maybe recalled by some of you, when, "all over the State of New 

 York except its western section, over all New England, through the 

 northeastern portion of Pennsylvania, and in several parts of Canada, 

 ey ery grain field was invaded, and most of the fields literally thronged 

 with it." 



