m 
Annual Report of the 
came with them was, that they would stay about three years and 
then depart for good. This expectation has not been realized. 
They have done more or less damage every year since they came. 
There is nothing in their past history which makes it necessary to 
suppose that they will be unusually disastrous the coming summer; 
nor is there anything which forbids it. We must take our chances. 
The country is abundantly supplied with their seed, and if the win¬ 
ter and spring are favorable for them we have great reason to fear 
their ravages. They have experieneced many checks in the past, 
and we may escape serious damage in the future; but one thing'is 
certain, that is, they must be recognized as among the “powers that 
be” in any well regulated system of _faiming. We are under pro¬ 
found obligations to watch well their habits, and adopt some system, 
if possible, which will keep them in check. There is no hope of 
their extermination; they can only be regulated. 
If we look through a series of years we can see that the plagues 
and diseases of one generation give way to others in the next, 
so that in this line we may be continually looking for something 
new. The memories of many of us reach back to a time when some 
of the most alarming diseases of the present day were unknown, and 
£0 with the farmer’s pests, they are continually changing. There 
is one thin’g highly probable, viz.: that in farming, the method 
which deals most successfully with the evils upon us, is the one 
most likely to ward off evils to come. It is our excesses in farming 
which lead to our overthrow. These insects all exist, but are held 
in check by the natural balance of things. We open up conditions 
favorable for some particular species and they multiply until our 
crops are ruined. The cure, if there is any, will be to introduce 
conditions unfavorable for them, so that the} 7 will be remanded 
back to their original position. 
T1 e e is one problem susceptible of demonstration, and that is, 
that with a given number of bugs to the acre, if we can by any 
means double the growth of the crop on the same acre, we halve, 
at least, the probable damage. This points us towards good cul¬ 
ture and rich land. And here comes in another element in our 
favor: if we double the amount of forage produced by the acre, we 
doubtless retard by half the reproduction of the bugs. So that by 
good culture on rich land we are exposed to but one-fourth the dam¬ 
age that we are likely to experience without it. In dry, hot vveatli- 
