Arizona republican., 1912-07-29
THE CONFLICT
 |RREPRESS|BLE
Bug Bureau at Washington Waging War Against In sect Enemies That Cause Country Loss of Billion Dollars Annually.

WASHINGTON, July 23.-Although the average person may be of the opinion that this country is at peace with the world and with the excep- tion of local disturbances in the Philippines has been since the Span 1Sh unpleaSantneSS, 1t is neVerthe- less true that Uncle Sam is now engaged in a war involving annu- ally an amount greater than the indemnity paid to Germany by France as a result of the Franco German conflict in the seventies. Perhaps no more curious conflict has ever been kaged, for while the stake is more than 1.00,00O.00O yearly. a sum equal to the national debt, the con- flict is bloodless. Further than this it is being waged against insect enemies, the opposing force in the country's great battle against the bugs-bugs of every description rang
 ing from the ordinary garden cut worm and caterpillar to little known enemies whose depredations on the agricultural wealth of the country run far into the millions each year
 lIC NOIhuNl VI lllIo Nd lS llOl however, in the hands of the war department Instead of Uncle Sans bureau of Entomology-th bug bu- reau-in the department of agricul- ture is in charge of the campaign and is essentially our most active war department at present. More over it is war department eternally involved in thousands of wars. The enemies it wars against, the insect pests that prey upon our crops and gardens and forests, are numerous beyond computation. One might as easily try to compute the number of stars.
 The government spends a million dollars a year in this warfare, or more money than all the rest of the civilized world. It maintains high ly specialized bureau of 600 persons, of whom 150 are trained specialists. And these scientists it lures dis criminately from professional chairs in our largest universities. These men are the generals of the army. Under their directions attachments are kept moving in all portions of the country to quell insect Outbreaks. l They keep an army division in New England fighting the gipsy and browntail moths and another division in the south fighting the cotton boil weevil. and various scouting and skirmishing parties are constantly on I the march in various parts of the country.
 Though there are thousands of va rieties of insect pests in the United States, those of the first class, which become really menacing agricultural raiders, only number between 75 and l so. But these damage growing things | to the extent of $1,200.000 900 a year, | The worst insect enemies of our az | ricultural that Uncle Sam's entomo- logical army has had to fight have l been aliens. Of course the three that stand out pre- e-eminently are the gipsy moth, the brown tail moth and 1 the cotton boil Weavil. The gipsy moth came from the south of Europe the brown moth from Holland or France. and the boil Weevil crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico.
 l The fight against the gipsy moth has been nothing less than long warfare of twenty years in which the national government and the New England states, particularly Massa- chusetts, have expended millions oi
 dollars. It is the biggest insect wal | in the history of the world IT
 Massachusetts. Maine. Connecticut
 Rhode Island and New Hampshire
 the myriad pests have stripped whole forest areas clean of leaves. In re
 taliation the defensive army has ex- pended as much as a hundred tons oi
 cir nCi ammunition consists principally o
 arsenate of lead and sticky sub 1 stances for tree banding to prevent | the caterpilIars climbing to their des'
 tructfve feast For the past de 1 cade the eastern portion of New
 England has been under the strict
 .+ o,+omoloqicaI quarantine. Ex- | port articles likely to carry the eggs
 of the gipsy moth have been supJec
 to q rigorous inspection, All road side trees and foliage have beer
 drenched with deadly poison so tha'
 no caterpillars could live there ano
 drop down by means of their long
 silken threads upon passing VehlcieS and he carried into n-infected ter
 ritory.
 | Moreover, great armies of wlngeo
 mercenaries, thousands of them Vari- | ous beetle and fly parasites or Iht gipsv moth, have been imported rom Italv. France, Portugal, Russia aho
 Japan, to fight for Uncle sam agalhs' the invaders These mercenarles lnui- | tiply in numbers from twenty 10 l hundred times every year
 The campaign against the gypsy
 moth has been simplified in one way
 because the female moth cannot ny | The equally destructive broWnta' moth however, later arrlVai III 1 New England, spreads much more
 rapidly, for the female flies readily
 and is carried by the wind for