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Even here, however, the total loss is very great. Almost equally important is the damage wrought by the chinch-bug, which is also one of the greatest pests in wheat and oats. Every year in different sections of the country, bill-bugs, wire-worms, cutworms, cornstalk borers, locusts, grasshoppers, corn plant-lice and other insects, destroy millions of bushels of corn.
Toads will eat almost any kind of insect, are absolutely harmless, and should be carefully protected. There is one class of insects which, so far from being an enemy to man, combines with him to kill the harmful insects. Among these are the black beetles which feed on cutworms and other larvæ which injure the roots of plants.
The others belong to the secret guild of the Wise Watchers who, sitting silently in the shadows of the woods, or perching in the trees around the edges of fields, wait for rats, mice, moles, rabbits, gophers, beetles, cutworms, and many other creatures which destroy vegetable life. The Wise Watchers kill these hurtful creatures, and so become the guardians of the fields."
Cutworms had destroyed the melons; cabbage-lice and squash-bugs had besieged the garden, attended by caterpillars; and grasshoppers by the millions had hopped across the farm, devouring as they went and leaving disaster behind them. The hot wind that bent the stunted grass beside the road reminded the biggest brother of every catastrophe of the year, and he cried out angrily to it.
Even under ordinary conditions grasshoppers are a staple food of many members of the shorebird family, and the following species are known to feed on them: Shorebirds are fond of other insect pests of forage and grain crops, including the army worm, which is known to be eaten by the killdeer and spotted sandpiper; also cutworms, among whose enemies are the avocet, woodcock, pectoral and Baird sandpipers, upland plover, and killdeer.
They said that he helped Farmer Green more than he injured him, for he did a great deal in the way of eating beetles, cutworms and grasshoppers, as well as many other insects that tried to destroy Farmer Green's crops. So you see he had his good points, as well as his bad ones. For a number of years Mr. Crow had spent each summer in Pleasant Valley, under the shadow of Blue Mountain.
It attacks the straw, causing the heads of wheat to fall over and wither away. The injury done by the green-bug comes just as the wheat begins to ripen, the tiny green creatures attaching themselves in great numbers to the heads of the wheat. Other insects which prey on the wheat crop are grasshoppers, the wheat midge, cutworms and army-worms.
H.W. Tinkham, of Fall River, Mass., says of the spotted sandpiper: "Three pairs nested in a young orchard behind my house and adjacent to my garden. Cutworms and cabbage worms were their special prey. After the young could fly, they still kept at work in my garden, and showed no inclination to go to the shore until about August 15th.
By way of illustrating what a mockery our national Department of Agriculture is, I will say that I wrote to Secretary Morton about the cutworms and asked that he suggest an antidote against the same. Although five weeks have elapsed since I dispatched that letter I have had no word of any kind from the Department of Agriculture.
He will spend the whole night watching for the cutworms that are after our tomato plants. When we see a woodpecker industriously pecking at the bark of our apple trees, we know that he is after the larvae of the terrible codling moth and we call him our friend.
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