ppers and other insects annually
destroy fifty-three million dollars' worth of hay and that two million
dollars' worth of cereals are each year eaten by our insect population.
In fact, we are told that one-tenth of all the cereals, hay, cotton,
tobacco, forests, and general farm products is the yearly tax which
insects levy and collect. In some parts of the country
market-gardening and fruit-growing are the chief industries of the
people. Now, when a vegetable raiser or fruit grower starts to count
up the cost of {103} his crops, one of the items which he must take
into consideration is the 25 per cent. of his products which goes to
feed the insects of the surrounding country.

Not all insects are detrimental to man's interests, but as we have just
seen the Government officially states that many of them are
tremendously destructive. Any one who has attempted to raise apples,
for example, has made the unpleasant acquaintance of the codling moth
and the curculio. Every season the apple raisers of the United States
expend eight and one-quarter million dollars in spraying, to discourage
the activities of these pests. In considering the troubles of the
apple growers we may go even farther and count the twelve million
dollars' worth of fruit spoiled by the insects despite all the spraying
which has taken place. Chinch bugs destroy wheat to the value of
twenty million dollars a year, and the cotton-boll weevil costs the
Southern planters an equal amount.

_Plagues of Insects._--Every now and then we read {104} of great
plagues of insects which literally lay waste a whole section of
country. History tells of these calamities which have troubled the
civilized world from the days of Pharaoh to the present time. During
the summer of 1912 there was a great outbreak of army worms in South
Carolina. In innumerable millions they marched across the country,
destroying vegetation like a consuming fire. In the year 1900 Hessian
flies appeared in great numbers in Ohio and Indiana, and before they
subsided they had destroyed absolutely two and one-half million acres
of the finest wheat to be found in the Middle West, and wheat land
dropped 40 per cent. in value.

Closing this Year Book, with its long tables of discouraging
statements, we may find more cheerful reading if we turn to another
Agricultural Department publication entitled, "Some Common Birds and
Their Relation to Agriculture; Farmers Bulletin number Fifty-four." W