In the densely populated countries of Europe, the losses occasioned by injurious insects are most severely felt, though from many causes, such as the greater abundance of their insect parasites, and the far greater care taken by the people to exterminate their insect enemies, they have not proved so destructive as in our own land. In this connection I may quote from one of Dr. Asa Fitch's reports on the noxious insects of New York, where he says: "I find that in our wheat-fields here, the midge formed 59 per cent. of all the insects on this grain the past summer; whilst in France, the preceding summer, only 7 per cent. of the insects on wheat were of this species. In France the parasitic destroyers amounted to 85 per cent.; while in this country our parasites form only 10 per cent." "A true knowledge of practical entomology may well be said to be in its infancy in our own country, when, as is well-known to agriculturists, the cultivation of wheat has almost been given up in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Virginia, from the attacks of the wheat midge, Hessian fly, joint worm, and chinch bug. According to Dr. Shimer's estimate, says Mr. Riley, in his Second Annual Report on the Injurious Insects of Missouri, which may be considered a reasonable one, in the year 1864 three-fourths of the wheat, and one-half of the corn crop were destroyed by the chinch bug throughout many extensive districts, comprising almost the entire North-West. At the annual rate of increase, according to the United States Census, in the State of Illinois, the wheat crop ought to have been about thirty millions of bushels, and the corn crop about one hundred and thirty-eight million bushels. Putting the cash value of wheat at $1.25, and that of corn at 50 cents, the cash value of the corn and wheat destroyed by this insignificant little bug, no bigger than a grain of rice, in one single State and one single year, will therefore, according to the above figures, foot up to the astounding total of _over seventy-three millions of dollars_!"