Page 230 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

PART IL—PRESERVATION
CHAPTER XXII
OUR ANNUAL LOSSES BY INSECTS "You take my life when you do take the means whereby I Uve."
"In no country in the world," says Mr. C. L. Marlatt, of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, "do insects impose a heavier tax on farm productsthanintheUnitedStates." Theseattacksarebaseduponan enormous and varied annual output of cereals and fruits, and a great variety and number of trees. For every vegetable-eating insect, native and foreign, we seem to have crops, trees and plant food galore ; and their ravages rob the market-basket and the dinner-pail. In 1912 there were riots in the streets of New York over the high cost of food.
In 1903, this state of fact was made the subject of a special inquiry \ by the Department of Agriculture, and in the "Yearbook" for 1904, the reader will find, on page 461, an article entitled, "The Annual Loss Occa- sionedbyDestructiveInsectsintheUnitedStates." Thearticleisnot of the sensational type, it was not written in an alarmist spirit, but from beginning to end it is a calm, cold-blooded analysis of existing facts, and theconclusionsthatfairlymaybedrawnfromthem. Theopinionsof several experts have been considered and quoted, and often their inde-
pendent figures are stated.
With the disappearance of our birds generally, and especially the
slaughter of song and other insect-eating birds both in the South and North, the destruction of the national wealth by insects forges to the front as a subject of vital importance. The logic of the situation is so simple a child can see it. Short crops mean higher prices. If ten per cent of our vegetable food supply is destroyed by insects, as certain as fate we will feel it in the increased cost of living.
I would like to place Mr. Marlatt's report in the hands of every man, boy and school-teacher in America; but I have not at my disposal the meanstoaccomplishsuchatask. Icannotevenprintithereinfull,but the vital facts can be stated, briefly and in plain figures.
Crops and Insects.
Corn.—The principal insect enemies of corn are the chinch bug, corn-root worm (Diabrotica longicornis) , bill bug, wire worm, boll-worm