THE GARDEN PRICIER 



Four-fifths of all the kinds of animals are insects — 

 and some single families contain more species than a 

 person of normal vision can see stars on a clear night. 

 It is believed, too, that the greater proportion of animal 

 matter on the globe's land surface exists in the form of 

 insects — in other words, that if all the insects on and in 

 the land could be piled in one enormous heap, with all 

 the rest of the animal kingdom, m.an included, piled in 

 another, the mountain of insects would be larger 

 than the mountain of animals and men! 



Out of these legions it would be difficult to select 

 all of those who are indeed friends to the human race, 

 even if the entire insect world were known. But with 

 anywhere from three- fourths to twenty- four- twenty- 

 fifths of it, according to the correctness of the estimates, 

 still in the darkness of the unknown, it is of course 

 impossible. And it is almost impossible to devise any 

 rule which shall help the layman in determining which 

 of the loiown insects are which — though such a rule 

 does suggest itself as the food taste and habits of the 

 various kinds are considered. 



It is based on the fact that insects are seldom or 

 never, truly omnivorous. They either eat meat or 

 they eat vegetables — or suck the juices from one or the 

 other — ^but the same insect does not indulge in both. 

 The meat eaters, therefore, being the warrior- hunters 

 or beasts of prey of the insect world, are man's friends; 

 the vegetarians, his everlasting foes. This seems to be 

 a fair standard of judgment for all those which affect 

 man directly, and from it one may formulate a plan of 



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