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PART II.—­PRESERVATION

CHAPTER XXII

OUR ANNUAL LOSSES BY INSECTS

“You take my life when you do take the means whereby I live.”

“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 products than in the United States.”  These attacks are based upon an 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 Occasioned by Destructive Insects in the United States.”  The article is not 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 the conclusions that fairly may be drawn from them.  The opinions of several experts have been considered and quoted, and often their independent 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 means to accomplish such a task.  I cannot even print it here in full, but the vital facts can be stated, briefly and in plain figures.

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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 or ear-worm, cut-worm, army worm, stalk worm, grasshopper, and plant lice, in all a total of about fifty important species!  Several of these pests work secretly.  At husking time the wretched ear-worm that ruins the terminal quarter or fifth of an immense number of ears, is painfully in evidence.  The root-worms work insidiously, and the moles and shrews are supposed to attack them and destroy them.  The corn-root worm is charged with causing an annual loss of two per cent of the corn crop, or $20,000,000; the chinch bug another two per cent; the boll or ear-worm two per cent more.  The remaining insect pests are charged with two per cent, which makes eight per cent in all, or a total of $80,000,000 lost each year to the American farmer through the ravages of insects.  This is not evenly distributed, but some areas suffer more than others.