Indeed, we may reasonably calculate the annual loss in our country alone, from noxious animals and the lower forms of plants, such as rust, smut and mildew, as (at a low estimate) not far from five hundred million dollars annually. Of this amount, at least one-tenth, or fifty million dollars, could probably be saved by human exertions.
To save a portion of this annual loss of food stuffs, fruits and lumber, should be the first object of farmers and gardeners. When this saving is made, farming will become a profitable and safe profession. But while a few are well informed as to the losses sustained by injurious insects, and use means to ward off their attacks, their efforts are constantly foiled by the negligence of their neighbors. As illustrated so well by the history of the incursions of the army worm and canker worm, it is only by a combination between farmers and orchardists that these and other pests can be kept under. The matter can be best reached by legislation. We have fish and game laws; why should we not have an insect law? Why should we not frame a law providing that farmers, and all owning a garden or orchard, should cooperate in taking preventive measures against injurious insects, such as early or late planting of cereals, to avert the attacks of the wheat midge and Hessian fly; the burning of stubble in the autumn and spring to destroy the joint worm; the combined use of proper remedies against the canker worm, the various cut worms, and other noxious caterpillars? A law carried out by a proper State entomological constabulary, if it may be so designated, would compel the idle and shiftless to clear their farms and gardens of noxious animals.
46. Pickle Worm and its Moth.
Among some of the injurious insects reported on by Mr. Riley, the State Entomologist of Missouri, is a new pest to the cucumber in the West, the Pickle worm (Phacellura nitidalis, Fig. 46). This is a caterpillar which bores into the cucumbers when large enough to pickle, and which is occasionally found in pickles. Three or four worms sometimes occur in a cucumber, and in the garden a single one will cause it to rot. One of the most troublesome intruders in our graperies is the Vine dresser (Chœrocampa pampinatrix, Fig. 47, larva and pupa; Fig. 48, adult), a single caterpillar of which will sometimes "strip a small vine of its leaves in a few nights," and occasionally nips off bunches of half-grown grapes.
48. Vine Dresser Moth.
47. Vine Dresser and Chrysalis.
