Analyses of Books. [October, 
The work is illustrated with cuts of the apparatus required for 
administering the various anaesthetic agents. 
Report upon Cotton Insects , prepared under the direction of the 
Commissioner of Agriculture m pursuance of an Ac f 
Congress approved June 19 th, 1878. By J. H. Comstock, 
Entomologist to the Department of Agriculture. Washing- 
ton : Government Printing-Office. 
Some little time ago we attempted, with but ^anty apparent 
success, to draw attention to the need of more efficient protec 
tion for our small insectivorous birds. Casting about for argu- 
ments and pleas more effective than any we had used, we > come 
m3 on the work before us, and find here plain faas more than 
sufficient for our purpose. The damage done to «ops by cer- 
tain insefls is here set forth in such a matter-of-faa style that 
any man of common sense can scarcely avoid two conclusions . 
that flies and caterpillars, and other the like buzzing, cree P 
things, are by no means the contemptible trifles commonly sup- 
posed, but are well worth the attention of praaical men ; and, 
secondly, that whatever natural agents can protea our fields and 
gardens from their ravages deserve not merely 
formal encouragement. It is somewhat strange that, t t» 
have had acute observers of insea and bird life for more th 
two centuries, yet the public mind is less alive to the se truths in 
England than in the United States. Though we still keep "P 
the farce of professing to be a praaical people, we accept the 
ravages of vermin as a necessity, and neither enquire what is 
the total of the damage sustained, nor if there is not the poss - 
bl They f manage^these things differently in America, as Mr. 
Comstock’s work most clearly shows. It appears that a sing e 
Lepidopterous insea, a mere moth, inflias upon the cotton- 
growing States losses which are estimated at from 15 to 20 
million dollars annually for the entire period since th e Civil War, 
whilst there is good reason for supposing that prior to 1861 this 
insea was equally destruaive. The same enemy. Aletia ar S l ' 
lacea, infests the cotton plantations of South America and 
the West Indies, and in some of the latter has absolutely caused 
the cultivation of this staple to be abandoned. If we call to 
mind that the figures above given show merely the loss 
by one insea upon one crop, we may form some faint idea ot 
the world’s vermin-bill, and the extent to which the human race 
is impoverished by creatures which some persons affect to con 
sider worthy the attention merely of children or of industriously- 
idle old gentlemen. 
