A Report On The Insects Of Massachusetts

Author : A. S. Packard
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781332297870
Total Pages : 36 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (978 download)

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Download or read book First Annual Report on the Injurious and Beneficial Insect of Massachusetts (Classic Reprint) written by A. S. Packard and published by . This book was released on 2015-08-05 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from First Annual Report on the Injurious and Beneficial Insect of Massachusetts But few, however, suspect how enormous are the losses to crops in this country entailed by the attacks of the injurious species. In Europe, the subject of applied entomology has always attracted a great deal of attention. Most sumptuous works, elegant quartos prepared by naturalists known the world over, and published at government expense, together with smaller treatises, have frequently appeared; while the subject is taught in the numerous agricultural colleges and schools, especially of Germany. 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 might 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." As the writer has already remarked in the current volume of the American Naturalist, "a true knowledge of practical entomology may well be said to be in its infancy, 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, 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. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.