With all these experiments the criticism is constantly made that unwittingly new and serious enemies to agriculture may be introduced. The unfortunate introduction of the English sparrow into this country is mentioned, and the equally unfortunate introduction of the East Indian mongoose into the West Indies as well. The fear is expressed that the beneficial parasitic insects, after they have destroyed the injurious insects, will either themselves attack valuable crops or do something else of an equally harmful nature. But there is no reason for such alarm. The English sparrow feeds on all sorts of things, and the East Indian mongoose, while it was introduced into Jamaica to kill snakes, was found, too late, to be also a very general feeder. As a matter of fact, after the snakes were destroyed, and even before, it attacked young pigs, kids, lambs, calves, puppies, and kittens, and also destroyed bananas, pineapples, corn, sweet potatoes, cocoanuts, peas, sugar corn, meat, and salt provisions and fish. But with the parasitic and predatory insects the food habits are definite and fixed. They can live on nothing but their natural food, and in its absence they die. The Australian ladybird originally imported, for example, will feed upon nothing but scale insects of a particular genus, and, as a matter of fact, as soon as the fluted scales became scarce the California officials had the greatest difficulty in keeping the little beetles alive, and were actually obliged to cultivate for food the very insects which they were formerly so anxious to wipe out of existence! With the _Scutellista_ parasite the same fact holds. The fly itself does not feed, and its young feed only upon certain scale insects, and so with all the rest. All of these experiments are being carried on by men learned in the ways of insects, and only beneficial results, or at the very least negative ones, can follow. And even where only one such experiment out of a hundred is successful, what a saving it will mean! We do not expect the time to come when the farmer, finding Hessian fly in his wheat, will have only to telegraph the nearest experiment station, "Send at once two dozen first-class parasites;" but in many cases, and with a number of different kinds of injurious insects, especially those introduced from foreign countries, it is probable that we can gain much relief by the introduction of their natural enemies from their original home. THE STRANGE STORY OF THE FLOWERS GEORGE ILES [From "The Wild Flowers of America," copyright by G. H. Buek & Co., New York, 1894, by their kind permission. The American edition is out of print: the Canadian edition, "Wild Flowers of Canada," is published by Graham & Co., Montreal, Canada. The work describes and illustrates in their natural tints nearly three hundred beautiful flowers.]