INSECTS and fungi appear to be increasing. In fact, they are increasing, if increase is measured by the experience of the horticulturist. We can scarcely suppose that, taking nature altogether, species are actually increasing, to any appreciable extent at least. But the cultivator finds new enemies every year, and in general he finds greater numbers.

This augmentation is partly apparent, partly actual. Nowadays we are looking for the enemy, while in other days he looked for us. Our vision is sharpened and we discover plagues which were overlooked but a few years since. This does not imply that the plagues may not be grievous: we may have known the results from childhood, but now we separate and diagnose, and we often find two or three things where we supposed there was but one. The man who chanced to write about blight fifty years ago probably covered the effects of a score of causes. We not only analyze more closely, but we publish more extensively. New plagues are quickly known, and our minds are in condition to receive an indelible impression of them. Scourges are no longer merely local in interest; we carry the burdens of the entire country. It is apparent, therefore, that pests appear to increase in part because we know more than we did last year.

But after all, the pests are actually increasing, yet less rapidly than we are apt to think. There are two methods of reinforcement.

First, insects and fungi, in common with all living objects, may change their habits. Insects are particularly adaptative to conditions. An insect fed upon wild plants in Colorado, occupying a limited area which was largely determined by the distribution of the food plants. A cultivated plant closely allied to the wild plants was carried westward to Colorado. The insects attacked it, liked it, and spread. The plant was the potato, and the insect became from that time the potato beetle. A maggot lived in wild thorns. But it chanced to find better and more abundant food in the cultivated apple. It spread, and became the apple maggot. A grub bored in oaks and other forest trees. The forest trees were lessened, and fruit trees were increased. The insect attacked the fruit trees and became known as the flat-headed apple-tree borer. An insect in Europe lived upon flowers of the fig-wort, occasionally attacking furs and clothes. It came to this country and attacked carpets, a habit which it does not possess in its native country. In America it is the carpet beetle. Instances of change of habit are abundant. In fact, such change is to be expected when insects find them selves under new or changing conditions. And to a lesser extent, the same is true of fungi.

Cultivated plants are often infected from wild ones.

Second, pests migrate, and are transferred. We are carrying on a commerce of insects, fungi and weeds. Many of our worst insects came from Europe, and more are coming. But transfers have been mutual. If Europe has given us the codlin moth, currant worm, and scores of other pests, both insect and fungous, so we have returned with phylloxera and the grape mildew. Certain species of animals and plants appear to be cosmopolitan. They follow in the wake of settlement and trade. And it often happens that introduced species are the worst. There are certain definite reasons for this, which cannot be detailed here. It simply means that change of habit often follows change of place.

It is commonly supposed, particularly in the case of fungi, that increased virulence of attack follows increased development of plants. The better the variety, the more highly it is bred, the more is it liable to fungous injury. The proposition may be true, but we need definite proof of it. It is true that there are instances in which highly improved varieties are more liable to attack than others, but the susceptibility may have no definite relation to amelioration. The tomato is an instance ; the rot does not often, if ever, attack the cherry sorts.

But if pests increase, what of it ? Such increase once meant discouragement or despair. It now means thought and labor. We know too much to repine; we are rapidly finding out that there is some way in which to combat everything. But there are those who say that it will not pay to combat ; the cost may be great, and margin of profit is everywhere low. This proposition is not true. It always pays, immediately or ultimately, to save crops. And the man who saves his crops reaps a double reward, for the chances are that his neighbor has lost his, and production is lessened. The curculio is a blessing to the thrifty man, inasmuch as it prevents the multitude from growing plums and peaches. Effort always pays, and it is the enemy which incites it. "Flowery beds of ease" are poets dreams. They would make idlers. Weeds have taught us to cultivate the soil.

L. H, Bailey.