Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/227

Rh one who has not been in this fight from the beginning and who has not seen the changes in development, can really appreciate what has happened in the last decade. Incidentally, this insect has made more positions for entomologists and has stimulated more interest in entomological work than all other species combined; in which respects it may not be considered an unmitigated pest.

As for plant-lice, their name is literally legion and their study is only begun. We find their eggs in winter and the insects themselves throughout the year. With the beginning of plant-growth the Aphids also begin development and the character of the infestation is as various as the plants or parts of plants attacked. They are not even confined to the overground parts of the plant, but may be on the roots as well; either permanently or in an alternate stage. It is just allowable to mention the grape Phylloxera as a species that does all its real injury in the subterranean stage, and to record that this is one of the few contributions that America has made to European agriculture, in return for the many that we have received.

The host of other plant bugs that suck the juices of vegetation can only be hinted at. Mention must be made, however, of the chinch bug, which in the middle west has been the subject of more careful study and experiment, and has done, perhaps, more wide-spread damage than any other of its ordinal allies.

As to feeders on foliage, there seems no end to them and they are of all orders. Nor are their injuries of recent notice. The plague of locusts which devoured all crops was one of those visited upon Egypt in the days of Moses, and similar plagues of locusts exist to this day in African countries. They have not been unknown in the United States in years past and it is not yet safe to say that there will be no more.

Gypsy and brown-tail moths afford excellent illustrations of the expense that caterpillars may impose on a community, for they have cost Massachusetts alone not less than $2,000,000 directly and indirectly, while the general government has already spent more than half a million.

No part of a plant being free from insect attack, the fruit and seeds should also be infested, and so we find it. Codling Moth and Plum Curculio are terms known to horticulturists throughout the country, while cotton-boll weevils have more recently taken a prominent position in our southern states.