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C. L. Marlatt, has started for Japan, China, and Java, for the purpose of trying to find the original home of the famous San José scale an insect which has been doing enormous damage in the apple, pear, peach, and plum orchards of the United States and if he finds the original home of this scale, it is hoped that some natural enemy or parasite will be discovered which can be introduced into the United States to the advantage of our fruit-growers.
To-day, from Halifax to Los Angeles, and from Key West to Victoria, a deadly contest is being waged. The fruit-growers, farmers, forest owners and "park people" are engaged in a struggle with the insect hordes for the possession of the trees, shrubs and crops. Go out into the open, with your eyes open, and you will see it for yourself. Millions of dollars are being expended in it.
Add to this the $12,000,000 of actual shrinkage in the apple crop, and the total annual loss to our apple-growers due to the codling moth and curculio is about $20,000,000. In the high price of apples, a part of this loss falls upon the consumer. In 1889 Professor Forbes calculated that the annual loss to the fruit-growers of Illinois from insect ravages was $2,375,000.
I believe that one of the chief causes of failure on the part of people in our circumstances is, that they employ help to do what they should have done themselves, and that it doesn't and can't pay small farmers and fruit-growers to attempt much beyond what they can take care of, most of the year, with their own hands.
It is fairly beyond question that of all birds that influence the fortunes of the farmers and fruit-growers of North America, the common quail, or bob white, is one of the most valuable. It stays on the farm all the year round. When insects are most numerous and busy, Bob White devotes to them his entire time. He cheerfully fights them, from sixteen to eighteen hours per day.
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