INSECT HELPERS 



diet close by, waiting to be eaten, she brings destruc- 

 tion to unbelievable hordes of one of man's most dreaded 

 garden enemies. 



The bee belongs to another class entirely — a class 

 of thin-winged insects which have mouth parts made 

 both to bite and to suck. But bees are far too well 

 behaved to bite, though some have been slanderously 

 accused of it. Bees are nectar drinkers — and it is in 

 seeking and sipping nectar that a bee accumulates on 

 her legs and her body the flower dust" which marks 

 her as a long- summer-day traveler. 



This flower dust is the real gold of the vegetable 

 kingdom — the magic, life-laden pollen grains, one of 

 the most precious of the unknowable mysteries of 

 Nature's laboratory. On the bee's body they travel 

 from one flower into another, and from the flowers of 

 one plant into those of another, thus accomplishing 

 that miracle of cross- pollination which Nature, for some 

 deep reason, demands. 



Insects help us therefore in two ways : directly, by 

 destroying our fruit's enemies, and indirectly, by being 

 the instruments of this curious exaction termed cross- 

 pollination or fertilization. And there are many kinds 

 of insects working in both classes — so many that it 

 is hardly possible to even hint at their numbers, or 

 their wonderful life stories here. For experts place 

 the total number of different kinds of insects in the 

 world at from two to ten million, of which number only 

 about four hundred thousand have so far been examined, 

 described and named. 



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