Our Common Insects: A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, Gardens and HousesPackard, A. S. (Alpheus Spring)
Science
Our Common Insects: A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, Gardens and Houses
Packard, A. S. (Alpheus Spring)
Insects
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.
[Illustration: 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
(Choerocampa 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.
[Illustration: 48. Vine Dresser Moth.
47. Vine Dresser and Chrysalis.]
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