CORN.--The principal insect enemies of corn are the chinch bug, corn-root worm (_Diabrotica longicornis_), bill bug, wire worm, boll-worm or ear-worm, cut-worm, army worm, stalk worm, grasshopper, and plant lice, in all a total of about fifty important species! Several of these pests work secretly. At husking time the wretched ear-worm that ruins the terminal quarter or fifth of an immense number of ears, is painfully in evidence. The root-worms work insidiously, and the moles and shrews are supposed to attack them and destroy them. The corn-root worm is charged with causing an annual loss of two per cent of the corn crop, or $20,000,000; the chinch bug another two per cent; the boll or ear-worm two per cent more. The remaining insect pests are charged with two per cent, which makes eight per cent in all, or a total of $80,000,000 lost each year to the American farmer through the ravages of insects. This is not evenly distributed, but some areas suffer more than others. [Illustration: THE CUT-WORM, (_Peridroma Sancia_) Very Destructive to Crops] WHEAT.--Of all our cereal crops, wheat is the one that suffers most from insects. There are three insects that cause to the wheat industry an annual loss of about ten per cent. The _chinch bug_ is the worst, and it is charged with five per cent ($20,000,000) of the total loss. The _Hessian fly_ comes next in order, and occasionally rolls up enormous losses. In the year 1900, that insect caused to Indiana and Ohio alone the loss of 2,577,000 _acres_ of wheat, and the total cost to us of that insect in that year "undoubtedly approached $100,000,000." Did that affect the price of wheat or not? If not, then there is no such thing as a "law of supply and demand." _Wheat plant-lice_ form collectively the third insect pest destructive to wheat, of which it is reported that "the annual loss occasioned by wheat plant-lice probably does not fall short of two or three per cent of the crop." HAY AND FORAGE CROPS.--These are attacked by locusts, grasshoppers, army worms, cut-worms, web worms, small grass worms and leaf hoppers. Some of these pests are so small and work so insidiously that even the farmer is prone to overlook their existence. "A ten per cent shrinkage from these and other pests in grasses and forage plants is a minimum estimate." COTTON.--The great enemies of the cotton-planter are the cotton boll weevil, the bollworm and the leaf worm; but other insects inflict serious damage. In 1904 the loss occasioned by the boll weevil, chiefly in Texas, was conservatively estimated by an expert, Mr. W.D. Hunter, at $20,000,000. The boll worm of the southwestern cotton states has sometimes caused an annual loss of $12,000,000, or four per cent of the crops in the states affected. Before the use of arsenical poisons, the leaf worm caused an annual loss of from twenty to thirty million dollars; but of late years that total has been greatly reduced.