A
By JOHN HOCHMANN
Some are pesky to man; many more are useful
to him; all are colorful creatures, as you'll see
in these beautiful true-to-life illustrations
One way to learn about insects
is to follow the example of
the man from Hickory, N.C., who
acquired a $1,000 bill. For safe
keeping, he put it in a metal box
which he hid away. One day when
he wanted to show the bill to
friends, he opened the lid and
found that its value had been cut
by 50 percent the inflationary
work of moths!
A far pleasanter way to learn
about insects is through the fine
color illustrations reproduced here
from Will Barker's forthcoming
book, Familiar Insects o America.
Scientists recognize more than one
million varieties of insects and cat
alogue five to six thousand new
ones each year. These prints, with
their variety, bright colors, and
scientific accuracy, reveal some of
the more common species.
Butterflies and Moths. Taken
together, butterflies and moths are
known scientifically as lepidoplern,
that is, scale-winged, because their
wings are covered with tiny scales,
no thicker than a human hair,
which come off as dust when you
touch them. To tell them apart,
remember that butterflies prefer
daylight, moths darkness; also, but
terflies hold their wings vertically
when at rest, while moths hold
theirs horizontally or folded.
Beetles. Besides being the most
numerous order of insects (250,000
varieties), beetles do man the most
harm. Their chief characteristic is
well-developed jaws adapted to
such functions as chewing, crack
ing seeds, boring, and catching prey.
Another characteristic is the hard,
thick forewing which covers most
of the body, giving it protective
armor. Beetles abound everywhere,
and almost every important farm
crop has its beetle enemy.
Ants, Wasps, and Bees. This
class of insects numbers about 60,
000 and is distinguished by mem
branous wings and by their adapta
tion to a highly social form of
colony life which has been com
pared (sometimes favorably) to
man's. Many forms have a stinger,
pincer, or saw on the abdomen, as
countless picnickers can testify.
Of all insects, ants have the most
highly developed societies. They all
live in colonies, either in soil, trees,
lumber, or nests which they skill
fully build themselves.
Bees also live in colonies, their
hives. Studied by scientists since
Aristotle, bees have a remarkable
homing instinct as well as a little
known ability to "count," that is, to
recognize nectar-bearing flowers nt
a distance by the number of petals.
Directly useful to man, bees pro
duce 242 million pounds of honey
and 4M million pounds of beeswax
annually, besides pollinating scores
of agricultural plants.
Closely resembling bees, wasps
build nests of paper and wood and
live in colonies, too. As their vic
tims know, wasps are meat-eating
insects; yet their sting is indirectly
beneficial to man since wasps kill
many harmful insects in their
search for food.
The Twist Twill Lion
on the labels of these
leading manufacturers
assures top quality.
bUCKHIDe
BROTHER
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