INSECT PESTS.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 15 July 1920, Page 3

INSECT PESTS.

Tke papers are always full of instructions to "swat that fly," while tho house-fly and blue-bottle certainly do spread typhoid and similar diseases, there are other insects who bleed our pockets to the tune of millions of pounds yearly.

The common codlin n.oth costs Eng. Hsh apple-errowers at least £100,000 a year, and the damage done by th« green fly is greater. The flea beetle destroys whole fields of turnips, rape and cabbage every suminor, while as for the wire worm, this pest alone eats up every year the roots of enough wheat and other plants to feed half a mill'on people. There are only two plants the roots of which the wireworm will not attack. These are wood and mustard. Tliere is only one way of clearing laud of wireworm, that is by using bisulphide of carbon ; but the poison is too expensive for ordinary tiald use.

Wood borei-8 are everywhere. The worst is the goat moth, which tunnels into the solid wood of pear, apple, walnut and other trees. There is only one remedy—namely to cut down an infested tree and burn it.

Sometimes we get an invasion of horrors like the Colorado beetle or the Hessian h'y. The Colorado beetle destroyed half the American potato crop in 1859, and so dreaded Is it that, by an. Order in Council, it is a serious offence for anyone, even a scientist, to keep one alivo in Groat Britain. As for the Hessian fly. it would be impossible to calculate the millions oi: bushels of wheat and rye which it has destroyed. lusoctt are man's worst onemies. Some scientists believe that in the end they may destroy mankind.