New Britain herald., 1926-06-04

beneficial and harmful and is the means of attracting to the cotton plant great variety of insect life.
 The worst cotton pest in this country and probably the most destructive cotton insect in the world is the Mexican cotton boil weevil, which annually takes toll of tens of millions of dollars from the cotton industry.
 The losses caused by the boil weevil are both direct and indirect and extend throughout virtually the entire financial and economic structure of the cotton belt.
 It is impossible to estimate the losses due to depreciated land values, closing down of cotton gins and oil mills and other indirect results of the weevil in- vasion. All estimates have been made entirely on the basis of the direct loss In nonproduction of cotton lint and seed. The annual direct and indirect loss is now well in excess of $200,000,000 Vir- tually 90 per cent of the cotton belt is now infested by the weevil, and this area produces 96 per cent of the cotton crop of the cotton belt of the United States. Nature has provided several means of preventing excessive multiplication of the weevil The most conspicuous of these are heat and insects that prey upon the weevil. The known parasitic enemies of the weevil number forty-fiye.
 STATISTICS assembled by the Bureau N of the Census in 1919 indicate that there were 163,00O,000 square feet in the United States covered by green houses, including frames and sashes, de voted to the growing of ornamental plants and vegetables. The income from the crops grown in these houses was $77,O00,000, of which $62,000,000, or vir- tually so per cent, represented flow ering plants and cut flowers. The annual loss due to insect attack for the period under review may be conservatively esti- mated at 10 per cent of the value ct the crop, or more than $6,OO0,000.
 Who or what is it that prevents these ravening hordes of insects from over running the earth and consuming the food supply of all?
 It is not man. Man, by the use of mechanically applied poisons, which are expensive (the capital invested in the insecticide and fungicide manufacturing business is about $100,000,0O0), unnatu- ral and dangerous, is able to repel to an extent the attacks on his orchard and garden.
 Out in the fields and in the forests he becomes, before any great eruption of insects, q panic-stricken fugitive. Neither is it disease, or the weather or animals or fungi, or parasitic and pre- dacious insects within their own ranks However large may be the share of these particular natural agencies in keeping insects in check, experience has shown that it is lamentably insufficient.
 Then what is it? The bird. Bird lifs, by reason of its predominating insect diet is the most indispensable balancing force in nature.
 For some years prior to 1877 vast numbers of red-winged blackbirds were poisoned in the spring and autumn around the cornfelds of Nebraska. This was done in the belief that the black birds were damaging the crops, espe- cially the wheat. Great numbers of prairie chicken, quail, blower and various other insect-eating species were de- stroyed at the same time by eating the poisoned grain. Then came 1877, and with it Nemesis. The locusts appeared in countless numbers. There were no birds to eat them-and Nebraska mourned.
 It is a common practice with all settlers in new country at once to set about killing the native birds In \ thoughtless and foolhardy manner.
 This stupid practice is all the more deplorable, because an enormous in- crease of insect pests invariably attends the operations of the pioneer agricul- turist. Finding in cultivated crops new and more succulent sources of food sup ply, insects change their primitive habits to swarm and multiply exceedingly upon the fertile fields of mans creation.
 For some unaccountable reason, the entomologist-the butterfly chaser-al- ways has been more or less popular butt of that species of the genus man known as the humorist Yet it would seem that the entomologist is really a part of our first line of defense. He stands ever on the watch between the remainder of us and that hungry creep ing host whose progress, if not halted, would result in the world being denuded of all growing thinrS-a uniyersaI d;. aster, the extinction of mankind.
 cOySrt0ht by Publtc Ledosv