other insect, and in seasons favorable to it, it multiplies to a degree which would prove almost fatal to the entire harvest, were it not that, in the great territorial extent of the United States, there is room for such differences of soil and climate as, in a given year, to present in one State all the conditions favorable to the increase of a particular insect, while in another, the natural influences are hostile to it. The only apparent remedy for this evil is, to balance the disproportionate development of noxious foreign species by bringing from their native country the tribes which prey upon them. This, it seems, has been attempted. The United States' Census Report for 1860, p. 82, states that the New York Agricultural Society "has introduced into this country from abroad certain parasites which Providence has created to counteract the destructive powers of some of these depredators." This is, however, not the only purpose for which man has designedly introduced foreign forms of insect life. The eggs of the silkworm are known to have been brought from the farther East to Europe in the sixth century, and new silk spinners which feed on the castor oil bean and the ailanthus, have recently been reared in France and in South America with promising success. The cochineal, long regularly bred in aboriginal America, has been transplanted to Spain, and both the kermes insect and the cantharides have been transferred to other climates than their own. The honey bee must be ranked next to the silkworm in economical importance.[89] This useful creature was carried to the United States by European colonists, in the latter part of the seventeenth century; it did not cross the Mississippi till the close of the eighteenth, and it is only within the last five or six years that it has been transported to California, where it was previously unknown. The Italian stingless bee has very lately been introduced into the United States. The insects and worms intentionally transplanted by man bear but a small proportion to those accidentally introduced by him. Plants and animals often carry their parasites with them, and the traffic of commercial countries, which exchange their products with every zone and every stage of social existence, cannot fail to transfer in both directions the minute organisms that are, in one way or another, associated with almost every object important to the material interests of man.[90]