HOUSE AND GARDEN 
242 
Tu 
NE, I9IO 
Insect Helpers 
by Grace Tabor 
W E are so constantly impressed by 
warnings, displayed everywhere, 
against malign little monsters, that our 
every instinct becomes destructive when 
our thoughts are turned to those animals 
which, according to a very great man’s 
very profound classification, are the high¬ 
est of the six divisions which compose 
the animal sub-kingdom known to science 
as Annulosa —the division grouped under 
the head Insccta. 
And so we are in danger of never 
knowing about the benign little allies 
which this group contains — and in still 
graver danger, through our ignorance, of 
destroying them, along with “varmints” 
generally. Such destruction is very much 
what the destruction of horses and cattle 
and sheep and dogs would be, if we pro¬ 
ceeded to slaughter all animals because 
tigers and wolves and panthers and other 
savage kinds were inimical to the life and 
comfort of man. 
Quite as the faithful sheep dog defends 
a flock against invading foes does the 
dainty lady-bug defend certain other of 
our possessions against marauding enem¬ 
ies—and though in the interests of truth 
and honesty I suppose we must confess 
that she does it unconsciously, she never¬ 
theless does it very well, and as nothing 
else can do it. 
And quite as the patient horse fetches 
and carries for man from morning until 
night, the active bee fetches and carries 
also, performing - a service so great and so 
important that without it only a compara¬ 
tively small percentage of man’s fruit 
foods would ever he produced at all. She 
serves while serving her hive, to be sure— 
but we are none the less dependent on her. 
These two small creatures—the lady- 
bug and the bee—are examples of the dual 
service which many of their great group 
tender to the lords of creation—without 
the said “lords,’’ by the way, having any¬ 
thing to do about it—and as such exam¬ 
ples let us see just what it is that each does. 
OUR FRIEND THE LADY-BUG 
The lady-bug, in the first place, is not 
a bug at all, but a beetle—that is, an insect 
of the sheath-winged order. These have 
two pairs of wings, the outer always hard 
and armor-like, and closing down over the 
thin and folded, membraneous under pair. 
(True bugs do not have these sheath 
wings but only gauzy ones; some indeed 
are devoid of wings altogether and can 
only crawl or run about.) And like most 
beetles the lady-bug is predaceous—is in 
other words, a preying, carnivorous little 
savage who devours with rapacious appe¬ 
tite other insects, her preference for those 
of the scale class being especially notable. 
This taste in food therefore is the reason 
of her value to man; in feeding herself 
and depositing her eggs where the newly 
hatched larvae will find their favorite dish 
ready and waiting to be eaten, she brings 
destruction to unbelievable hordes. 
THE SERVICE RENDERED BY THE BEE 
The bee belongs to another class en¬ 
tirely— 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 
accused of it. Bees are nectar-drinkers— 
and it is in sipping and seeking 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 
flower 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 an¬ 
other, thus accomplishing that miracle of 
cross pollination which Nature, for some 
deep reason, demands. 
THE SIZE OF THE INSECT WORLD 
Insects help us. therefore, in two ways: 
directly, by destroying our fruit enemies, 
and indirectly by being the instruments of 
this curious exaction termed cross pollina¬ 
tion 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 ; and of this num¬ 
ber only about four hundred thousand 
have so far been examined, described and 
named. Four-fifths of all the kinds of 
animals are insects—and some single fam¬ 
ilies 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 
the land could be piled in one enormous 
heap, with all the rest of the animal king¬ 
dom, man included, piled in another, the 
mountain of insects would be larger than 
the mountain of animals and men! 
HOW TO KNOW FRIEND OR FOE 
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 
known insects are which — though one 
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. Thev 
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 likely to be a fair standard of judg¬ 
ment for all those who aid man directly, 
and from it one formulates a plan of ac¬ 
tion, limited to be sure, but pretty certain 
to be all right as far as it goes. So the 
rule is never to destroy any kind of insect 
creature that is ever caught in the act of 
destroying another. 
Compassion must be leashed with the 
strong reins of indifference at the writh- 
ings of a Cut-worm in the cruel mandibles 
of a Ground-beetle, or the frantic terror 
and agonizing struggles of a baby pear- 
tree Psylla when the “veritable dragon,” 
which is the larvase of the Lace-leaf fly, 
seizes it between its pair of great sucking 
tubes preparatory to drawing the life 
fluids from its body. These things must 
not be discouraged, no matter how un¬ 
pleasant they are to witness or to think 
of — else the Cut-worm will lay low his 
harvest and the Psylla will pump the life 
from the defenseless trees. 
Bees are much pleasanter creatures, to 
all outward appearances at least — they 
behave atrociously to their own kind — and, 
aiding indirectly as they do, they are not 
of course to be measured by any such dis¬ 
tressing and murderous test; in fact, bees 
we already know as friends. 
SPRAY WHEN THE BLOSSOM PETALS FALL 
No spraying or poisoning should ever 
be done when bees are at work, and noth¬ 
ing that will injure them should be used 
on fruit or ornamental flowers at any time 
when they are in evidence. The regula¬ 
tion time for spraying will not interfere 
with “bee pasturage” if strictly adhered 
to, as the bees are seeking nectar before 
the flower has been fertilized, consequently 
before the petals drop. The falling of 
the petals is the signal for the first appli¬ 
cation of all those sprays which aim at 
the destruction of worms — the larval 
forms of numerous creatures which are 
deposited, in the egg, at some point within 
the flower and thus work from the “blow ’ 
end toward the center of the fruit — and 
these sprays should never be used until 
this signal is observed. 
