264 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off, Das. 
country. a material increase, not only in the number of individuals, 
but also of species of pestiferous foes which prey upon the products 
of the orchard, field and garden. Eminent entomological authorities 
assure us that at least one-terth of all the cultivated crops of this 
country are annually destroyed by insects, and that the aggregate 
amount of damage done is upwards of $300,000,000 every year in the 
United States; and of this immense sum it is considered to be a very 
conservative estimate to state that Pennsylvania’s share through 
insect ravages alone is about $5,000,000 annually. In North Carolina 
the insect hosts annually, it is said, destroy over one and one-half 
million dollars worth of agricultural products. In 1893 the loss 
from granary insects to the corn crop alone in the State of Alabama 
was. claimed to be $1,671,882, and in the Lone Star State the grain 
wevils, according to a well-known writer, caused an annual loss to 
the stored cereals of over $1,000,000. In 1874 the Western States 
were visited by grasshoppers who played such havoe with the crops 
that their depredations amounted, it is asserted, to $45,000,000. The 
cinch bug made himself so numerous in Illinois in 1864 that his ap- 
petite cost the people of that state over $73,000,000; and in Missouri 
in 1874 the same voracious cinch bug devoured agricultural pro- 
ducts to the tune of $19,000,000. In the cotton raising states the 
annual loss through the cotton worm from 1864 was estimated to be 
about $15,000,000. Tt is claimed that each species of plant on an 
average supports three to four species of insects, and numerous 
plants, particularly those in general cultivation, Dr. Packard tells 
us, afford subsistence to many more; many species, which now at- 
tack garden vegetables or fruit or vines, prior to the settlement 
of this State, and before the ruinous forest fires nearly every spring 
and fall sweep over thousands and thousands of acres on which grow 
the noble forest monarchs in all their primitive grandeur, lived on 
entirely different vegetal life. There are, it is said, not less than 
seventy-five kinds of insects injurious in their habits inhabiting the 
apple orchard. Before the apple and other fruit trees were intro- 
duced to America many of these insect enemies lived on such forest 
trees as the oaks, elm, wild cherry, maple, ash, willow and others. 
Forest trees are, as Dr. Packard states, “particularly liable to depre- 
(lations of insects, certain species of which attack the roots, others 
the bark, some the wood, many the leaves and a few the fruit and 
nuts. The oak harbors between 500 and 600 kinds of insects, the 
hickories afford maintenance to 140 recorded species, the birch to 
over 100 species, the maple to 85, the poplar to 72, while the pine 
yields nourishment to over 100 different kinds.” 
Our agricultural department has received lately upwards of 100 
written communications from grape growers along the eastern shores 
