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Show 1 ' 1 ! A New Bug to Fight j i By Frederic J. Haskin. WASHINGTON". l. C. Sept. 8. The corn cio, of Anu'Th-a, one of the world's t'vatest food resources, is menaced by a stran.ce bug. A torcimi insect, the Kuropean corn-borer, corn-borer, which came into the country as a stowaway on ships sometime during the war, has appeared in t.'.e truck fields near Boston and also in New York. Vnctiecked by any of the natural enemies that prey upon it in its native country, the insect is spreading at an alarming rale, l.ast summer oniy ahout -leu square mites near Boston were affected. There are now 1400 square miles which are infested with the new pest. If it continues lo spread at this rate, in a few ears it will reach the great corn growing regions of the middle west, and when it does that, every American is likely to feel the malign power of this bug in the form of a corn famine. Perhaps the greatest difficulty about fighting an insect pest in this country is that a small inconspicuous bug does not lend himself to advertising. He has no hold upon the popular imagination. If a pest of tigers or rattlesnakes should appear in New England or New York, there would bo no difficulty In getting the men and the money with which to, fight them. The newspapers would play them up in big headlines. state legislatures would hold extra sessions to make appropriations, approp-riations, volunteers would hurry to the scene armed to the teeth. Even a sudden Influx of birds or small rodents, which at the rate of fifty miles an hour, in 'the direction in which it was going, there wotiUl he no resistance under us wings and "it would fall. This would be an air PtOktV-onsldering all phases of the situation, situa-tion, what does the increase in the cost of living amount to'.' -M. A. V. V t'arefullv prepared statistics, furnished fur-nished bv the National Industrial C.on-terence C.on-terence board, show that, on account ol , the war the cost of living, U lo July last had increased 71 per Kent. Thus the individual who was receiving iW a month in 1914. must now receive J1U a month to live as well as be did then. Q. What is the most popular tree m the' United states? W. K. A. The consensus ot opinion seems to be" that the white elm. or American elm, is our most popular tree. It is a shapely, dignified producer of shade and grows over a large area. Q. What did Brigadier General Charles G Dawes do before the war'.' N. C. A General Dawes was president of the Central Trust company, m Chicago, before the war. Twenty years ago he was comptroller of the currency at ash-inglon, ash-inglon, , , Q. Js it true that tho Bible is to be done in motion pictures? Y. F. V It was recently announced from Los Angeles that a motion picture corporation cor-poration bad been organized by church yeople there for the purpose ol making j pictures from the stories of fhe Bible and other religious works. These lilnis will be used in churches, chautauquas and Sunday schools. Q. Is there any difference between a woodchuck and a groundhog? A. E. J. A. Both names are applied to the same animal. A . , Q. Who originated the Esperanto language? lan-guage? W. T. .... A. This language was mvonieo oy a Kussian physician. Zamenhof. His first publication on the subject was printed in 1SS7, and was signed "Dr. Esperanto." Q. What is the origin of the hoarse, F. T. A. At first the hearse was merely a framework placed over the bodies of distinguished dis-tinguished persons at funeral services. Then came portable hearses, which carried car-ried the corpses of notables from the house to the church and grave. Then it came into general use for all classes of people. Q. I note that you say tho surname of tho Prince of Wales is Windsor. This must be a mistake, because all the records rec-ords I have been able to consult state that the name is Guelph or Wettin. F- W. , , ,, A. The surname of the royal family was formerly Wettin, but it was changed to Windsor by a royal decree issued- on July 17, 1917. ( inv reado'r can get the answer to any question by writing Tho Tribune Information bureau, Frederic J. 1-laskln, director, Washington, D. C. Give full name and address and enclose two-cent stamp for return postage. Be brief. All replies are sent direct to the inquirer.) ill, ea Lcneii to uesuuv mil'", in", would get a fair share of attention as would anything, in fact, which could be seen and photographed. But a mere bug, which lives inside of a stalk of corn doesn't get any attention except from a few farmers who are immediately affected, and a few scientists who make a life business of fighting bugs. Boston housewives have noticed this year that a remarkably large percentage of sweet corn offered in the local markets mar-kets ts worm-eaten. That is about all the notice the European corn borer has received outside of the areas where he is at work, raising his little family of five or six hundred children twice a year, and getting ready to devour the corn crop upon which we have always relied to fatten fat-ten our beef and pork. Unless millions are spent within the next few years to check his ravages, this bug will surely make meat scarce and expensive, ex-pensive, and he may cause something like panic in a large part of the United States. The plain fact of the matter is that .the insects are man's most dangerops enemies on earth, and the only ones which can dispute his control of nature. Every other creature either scuttles out of sight when the lord of the earth comes along, or else works for him in a humble spirit. But the mosquito calmly perches on his nose and pours Into his veins the deadly poison of malaria; the louse travels with his armies, Infects them with typhus and kills more of them than does the enemy; the fly lives In the same house with him and brings tvphoid fever as part of his hag-gage. hag-gage. The San Jose Scale, the cotton boll weevil, the gvpsy moth, the pink weevil, and the Hession flv devour millions or dollars worth of crops right under his eyes and he Is unable to stop them. The insects in-sects are eating us up and killing us off, but because thev are. small and inconspicuous, inconspic-uous, and we are too dull to appreciate anything that is not large and noisy, we let them get away with it. This new imoprtatlon from Europe Is described by scientists as the. most serious seri-ous insect nest that has yet struck us. In Us mature stage it is a moth. This moth lavs eggs upon the leaves and stalks of young corn during the summer and also upon some other food plants and weeds. In a few days the eggs hatch out as caterpillars. The caterpillars have a happy faculty of boring into the center of a stalk of corn, and also into the ears. Thev devour the grain, sap the vitality of the stalk, and sometimes cause it to rot and die The loss is often more than sixty per cent and may he almost total. A million borers have been estimated to Inhabit In-habit on acre of corn. The borer soends the winter in the corn stalk, and toward spring rolls hinjself up in a cocoon of his own manufacture. After a brief sleep he (or she) batches out as a moth and starts the process nil over again. The moth lives only a month at most, but in that time it finds a mate and the pair produce from three hundred to twelve hundred eags. It is the moths that cause the spread of the pest. When thev first hatch out. they get up in the air and fly. Often wind helps them along. The fact that an infected area of 400 square miles was more than tripled as the result of two hntchtngs of moths will give you an idea of how far these cren tares can travel. It would not take many generations for them to cross the continent, populating It as they went. The weak spot in the corn borer s way of life is his habit of soending the winter in a dry corn stalk. By burning all the corn stalks in an infected area, and also all the other stalks of plants In which the borer hibernates, he could theoretically pe exterminated in a single season. Theoretically, Theoret-ically, hut not practically! Uast ve-ir the state of Massachusetts spent $75. COO and the state of Xew York spent $su.flflo burning burn-ing up infected stubble and fodder and weeds. They had quite a little army'of men in the field, and directed by scientists scien-tists from the bureau of entomology here In spite of these efforts, as before mentioned, men-tioned, the borer managed to extend his range over three hundred per cent. The bureau of entomology is now asking ask-ing congress to appropriate half a million dollars for a grand assault on the infected areas in New York and New England next year. Mr. W. R. Walton, who is in charge of the work, says that the amount Is really too small. It would pay to spend five millions if the ravnges of the borer could he checked, for tho damage he is doing will quickly reach a much larger figure than that. But with the half million mil-lion an experiment can be tried on a fairly large scale and perhaps a method of combating com-bating the pest can he worked out. The scientists will hire thousands of laborers this fall. If they get the appropriation, and will make a special effort to burn up infected material along the edge of the infected in-fected area. What is too wet to burn will he steamed. At the same time work will be done all through the infected area. The scientists sav frankly that thev do not believe the borer can be exterminated. Man ran exterminate almost any other animal, and lias exterminated a pood ninny of them, but has never exterminated exter-minated an insect pest. All inject pests we ever had. or imported, are still with us. But after a certain length of time, a sort of truce is reached between man and any particular hu.;. Natural enemies develop to reduce its abundance. Scientists Scien-tists lenrn how to combat it, and tea"h the farmers how. Thus farmers In the southwest have practically outwitted the alfalfa weevil by chaneiny their methods of planting and irrliratin. The greatest danger from any imported pest is always in the first few years after its arrival. T,ike the human immi.trrants, it Feem.s to f invl the land of the fre a remarknblv sUmulatin.Lr place. Like them, it terdH to heeonv more prolific. ,rd most important of all. it has left nil of its natural enemies behind, and it takes a wh (le for new ones to develop. T fence the next few years are the eru-rial eru-rial years in the career of the corn borer. If its spread can be checked, or at least slowed clown, the pest may be rotten completely com-pletely under control liefore it readies the corn belt. But if it continues to advance at l;.s present rate of speed we face lean years. |