Pest

“ Take the mosquito pest, for instance: One who begins to feel irritation at the sound made by the wings of the insect, is already creating within himself a condition favorable to inflammation from the effects of the bite. ”

“ The egg-laying process may be repeated in a number of fruits and from each egg a larva hatches within a week and burrows to the stone, making a wormy fruit. Most of the infested fruits drop. Poisoning with an arsenate is the chief means of combating the pest. ”

“ Suffice to say, there is every prospect that the pest will continue to spread throughout the Eastern United States and Canada and that wherever it goes it will prove a direct pest to man as well as to his plants. ”

“ One had even crawled down to my foot, and made an incision which allowed the blood to pour out through my canvas shoe. All this day we have suffered from these disgusting pests. Our horses became quite striped with their own blood, and a dog that followed us looked as if he had run through a pool of clotted gore before we reached the highway again. Of all the pests I have experienced in the tropics, or in any land, whether mosquitoes, black flies, ants, snakes, or viler vermin, these are the most annoying and disgusting. ”

“ No one needs to be told to try to keep a house, or a room, clear of fleas, bed-bugs, or lice; indeed to have these creatures about is considered a mortal disgrace. Not only is their bite very unpleasant, but they may convey a variety of diseases, including plague and blood poisonings of various sorts. But there is another insect pest far commoner and far more dangerous than either fleas or bed-bugs, whose presence we should feel equally ashamed of ”

“ However useful insects may be in the general economy of nature, it is but too true that farmers and gardeners often find them a pest, and with each returning summer the pages of agricultural journals abound with remedies, offensive and defensive, against the obnoxious invaders. ”

“ In like manner, the army worm may be defeated by burning up her eggs with the grass-stalks in which they are deposited. Or we may enlist in our service the natural enemies of the various insect-pests, such as birds, toads, snakes. But their greatest foes are "those of their own household," predaceous or cannibal and parasitic insects. The study of the habits of these insect allies and insect enemies of the husbandman is the occupation of the practical entomologist. ”

“ Under the pretext that the annoying pest of insects, flying and creeping, required some remedy, the shrewd caterer prepared a substance that stuck to one like the Evil One, spread it freely on large sheets of brown paper, and distributed them judiciously where they would best serve his purpose. ”

“ But every other step is a fight. For instance, there's the woolly white fly and there's the rust mite and there's the purple scale, and there are a million other pests just as bad. And we have to battle with them, all the time. ”

“ Every lady gardener is troubled by insect pests—the horrid green canker-worm, the little green louse, the potato-bug; these are everywhere. One fights them with all sorts of powders and all sorts of syringes. ”

“ The silk-worm and the honey-bee have been in a measure domesticated, and rank with, though a long way after, our cattle, our animal pets and poultry. But wild insects! There is the turnip-fly, and the Hessian-fly, and botfly, and all sorts of worrying, and {112} blood-sucking, and disease-carrying flies, in and out of houses; and gnats and midges, and fleas in seaside lodgings, and wasps, and beetles, such as the cockchafer and blackbeetle—are not all these pests? ”

“ Man and beast suffer equally from them, as is implied in the words of Scripture, and, unless they are very cautiously removed, painful and obstinate is the result of their bites.
THE FLEA. Prevalence of the Flea in the East, and the annoyance caused by them to travellers—Fleas of the Lebanon—The Bey's bedfellows—The Pasha at the bath—Use of the word in Scripture.
This active little pest absolutely swarms in the East. The inhabitants are so used to the Fleas that either the insects do not touch them, or by long custom they become so inured to their attack that the bites are not felt. ”

“ When we observe, now, that different insects feed in two quite different ways, some by means of the biting type of mouth parts, and others by means of the sucking type, it becomes evident that we must know which kind of insect we are dealing with in the case of pests we may be trying to control. A biting and chewing insect can be killed by the mere expedient of putting poison on the out- side of its food, if it does not become aware of the poison and desist from eating it ”

“ Many little go-betweens we have discovered, with legs and wings, who operate as continual mischief-makers, and among these at last looms large and deadly, that most widespread and intimate of pests—the Common Fly. ”

“ Fifth Annual Report on the Noxious, Beneficial and other Insects of the State of Missouri. By Charles V. Riley, State Entomologist. 1873.
That abundance of correct information about the habits of noxious insects should be diffused among farmers is a thing of capital importance. Many insect-pests, which in former times ravaged the fields and orchards with impunity, are now easily held in check, or exterminated, owing to the enlarged knowledge derived from the researches of scientific entomologists. ”

“ Men, scantily attired, might have been seen stretched indolently in every patch of shade along the shelter of each house, fanning their perspiring faces with wide-brimmed hats. Insect pests, prominent among which appeared flying ants and malevolent 'bulldogs,' revelled in the thick air, to feed joyously off abundance of human and animal flesh. ”

“ Many of the insect pests that infest the garden come to prey upon the plants indoors. The same warfare I wage without, I must wage within. Care and attention are ever the price of the flower. The insects continue to multiply. They develop new races and people new countries. No sooner does one scourge become extinct than a dozen others take its place. For the weevil we have the army-worm, the potato-bug, the apple-tree borer, the codling-moth. I no sooner administer a soporific to the red spider than the aphides are at work, and these are scarcely subjugated ere the mealy-bug appears. ”

“ And these are all we have to fear, unless it be now and then a huge spider, which it is not the fashion here to kill, as they feed on flies. So comfort yourself with the thought that, as regards insect pests, we are quite as comfortable as in an country-house, and infinitely more comfortable than in English country-house, and infinitely more comfortable than in a Scotch shooting lodge, let alone an Alpine châlet. ”

“ When they increase to a great degree, as they did once in the house where I am now writing, they become noisome pests, flying into the candles, and dashing into people’s faces; but may be blasted and destroyed by gunpowder discharged into their crevices and crannies. ”

“ In view of these facts it is the duty of each and every farmer, young or old, to acquaint himself with these destructive pests and prepare himself for combating them. With a knowledge of the methods of controlling these pests much of this enormous loss can be prevented. ”

“ They make dirt. They tend to increase and maintain our insect pests and terrors. They penetrate to all unsavory places. They acquire disease themselves, or carry the germs of it in their blood or on their fur. ”

“ They breed rapidly and with the help of parasites and other beneficial insects usually control the plant-lice pests.
Observations and Studies
Examine about fruit trees, shade trees, truck crops and in wheat fields for the brightly marked beetles. Watch them move about the plant in search of food. Can they fly? Do you find them eating the leaves? Do you find any green lice near them? See if they feed on these lice. Examine [91] also for the soft bodied, tiger-like grubs. Do they eat the lice? Do they travel fast? Have they wings? ”

“ But we have no name for the uninvited animals—mostly small—which thus come into the country, until perhaps they become very common, and then we just call them “pests”—nasty hurtful things to be destroyed and got rid of. ”

“ Insect-pests which have depopulated whole provinces, such pests as the phylloxera and the Colorado beetle, are about to receive a check at the hands of the same class of scientific students. The application of knowledge of natural facts is in this case a very remarkable one ”

“ Talking about pests, in some parts the ants were even more terrible than the mosquitoes, and I have known one variety—a reddish-brown monster, an inch long—to swarm over and actually kill children by stinging them. ”

“ Nobody looked at him. He passed on unsuspected and deadly, like a pest in the street full of men. ”

“ Parasitic Vermin.—These are lice, fleas, ticks, the scale insects, and other pests which afflict our live stock. There are many ways of destroying them; the best and safest is a free use of carbolic acid soap. ”

“ Many larvae of beetles, moths, etc., bore into the bark and as far as the cambium or even into the wood or pith of trees, the local damage inducing general injuries in proportion to the number of insects at work: moreover, the wounds afford points of entrance for fungi and other pests. ”

“ But “’tis their nature to,” as the hymn-book says, and we must grin and bear it, [179] protecting ourselves from their assaults as best we may, thankful the while that the evil is no worse. Our winged pests are innocence itself compared with their congeners in other lands. Our midge, for instance, is to the mosquito as the dog-fish is to the shark, as the domestic cat is to the tiger ”

“ Lists, however, and considerations of the above sort, are a poor substitute for what is really required in such cases—the extermination of pests which are destructive alike to field crops, to trees and shrubs, and to plants, and which offer at best a very scanty return for the havoc they commit. ”

“ It is the persistent destruction of these, the beneficial and harmful alike, that has brought about the present condition of growing scarcity of predacious mammals and birds and corresponding increase of rodent pests of the farm, especially rats and mice. ”

“ But, observe again, fighting the soil demons and conquering them is only half the battle. There is not a tree, plant, shrub, vegetable, fruit, nor flower, in any latitude or zone, but that must contend with pests, parasites, and insects of all kinds. The herbivorous enemies are not limited to insects and creeping things, but actual diseases. ”

“ A more generally effective method of killing the pests is that of poisoning them. A mixture is prepared of bran, arsenic, cheap molasses, and water, sufficiently moist to adhere in small lumps, with usually some substance added which is supposed to make the “mash” more attractive to the insects. ”

“ About the very worst pests of man and domesticated animals are the Harvest-bugs, Red-bugs or Jiggers.... Men and animals passing through low herbage that harbors them are attacked by these pests, which, whenever they succeed in finding a host, burrow in and under the skin, causing intolerable itching and sores, the latter caused by the feverish activity of the finger-nails of the host, if that should be a man, whose energy in scratching, apparently, cannot be controlled and who is bound forcibly to remove the intruders. ”

“ If they are hot at once destroved by the white blood cor- pus'cles, they will quickly enter the red blood corpuscles, and the victim will soon show symptoms of malaria. THE HOUSE FL?." AND SOME OF lrs RELATIONS Our familiar domestic pest, the bouse fly, may be taken as the type of a large group of flies, and in particular of those belonging to the family Muscidae, which is named from its best known member, 3lu?c? dome?Iic?, the bouse f] v--musc? being the Latin word for fly. The bouse f] y (Fig. ?82 A) , though particularly a domes-
[34 ? ]
MOSO? ”

“ For more than a century these little flies have been recognized as among the most serious pests of stock, particularly in the south where, besides the actual loss by death of many animals yearly, the annoyance is so great as to sometimes make it impossible to work in the field. Human beings are often attacked, and as the bite is poisonous and very painful great suffering may result and cases of deaths from such bites have been reported. ”

“ Expert botanists are studying the conditions under which these pests appear and therefore how we may either guard our flowers and food-vegetables from their ravages, or remove the parasites when once they have settled on their victims. The loss to farmers, fruit-growers and horticulturists each year through parasites is enormous. ”

“ The sources of infestation are many, and the invasion of a house is not necessarily due to neglect, though the continued presence of the pests is quite another matter. In apartments and closely placed houses they are known to invade new quarters by migration. ”

“ But does not the worm-devouring mole do exactly what the worm accomplishes, aerate and moisten the ground through its tunnels, and throw good topdressing to the surface? In short, we must remember that those creatures which appear to be of service by destroying pests do not discriminate ”

“ From the foregoing Observations we may learn, that all Pestilential Distempers, whether in Animals or Plants, are occasion’d by poisonous Insects convey’d from Place to Place by the Air, and that by uncleanly Living and poor Diet, Humane and other Bodies are disposed to receive such Insects into the Stomach and most noble Parts ”

“ If the owners could only realise the importance of ridding them of these ever-noisome pests, there would be far less of snappishness, mange, fits, &c. I have seen animals literally worried to death by fleas, perfectly exhausted from incessant irritation, at last worn to a skeleton, and gradually extinguished by a creeping consumption. ”

“ Ever since cultivation began man has probably been cultivating not only the crops he desires, but also the pests which infest them, and if variation of his chosen plants occurs—and no one will deny that—surely variation of the fungi and insects which live on them also takes place. That this is so can be demonstrated, though, since it is not part of my theme to go into the question of peculiarities of species and races of parasites, the subject must here be passed over with a few remarks only. ”