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32 WISCONSIN CRANBERRY GROWERS' ASSOCIATION
times by other nations and finally was completed by Uncle Sam,
when he found a way to stamp out the mosquito and fly menace
responsible for the death of hundreds of working men prior to this
time. The clean-up has been so thorough there that the land, once
over-run by mosquitoes and house flies, is noted today for its free-
dom from these pests
We certainly envy Panama after a summer such as we have just ex-
perienced with such an abundance of house flies continually annoying
us, and while we could stamp them out and would be compelled to do
so if typhoid fever beeane epidemic as it does in some sections of the
world, we are willing to put up with a lot of annoyance before being
willing to pay the price for such a clean-up. If Uncle Sam were to
clean up the mosquitoes we have here in Wisconsin, I'm afraid some
of our cranberry growers would quit working and think they were in
Heaven, because Wisconsin mosquitoes certainly can bite without any
apparent effort on their part. Scientists have recently introduced in
Hawaii a non-blood sucking species of mosquitoes which feed upon
plant life, and the young wigglers of this species feed upon the larvae
of the blood-sucking forms in the water. If these adult non-blood
sucking mosquitoes would annoy the weeds in the cranberry bogs by
their feeding half as much as our native mosquitoes do the folks
about the bog, they certainly ought to be able to put a lot of them
out of commission.
It may interest you to know in this connection that the entomolo-
gists now hold "schools" for training the ladybird beetle used
so ex-
tensively in California for controlling the mealy bugs in the citrous
orchards there. The young ladybird beetles are fed nothing but
mealy bugs in an enclosure-from the time they are hatched, and upon
"graduation" from these schools have so acquired the habit that
they
will eat nothing but mealy buga. Late last fall, eight million humble
little ladybugs collected on the tops of California mountains where
they hibernate among the rocks, were shoveled up in their sleep and
kept asleep in cold storage by one organization and released at the
critical time this summer. They were offered on the market at a price
of $1.00 per thousand, which number is considered sufficient for an
acre of orchard.
Speaking of depression, which seems to be the topic of the day, I
wonder if any of you recall the serious economic depression caused by
a little insect that came into the United States from Mexico in 1892.
It was known as the Mexican Cotton Boll Weevil and caused hun-
dreds of thousands of people to move from their farms to nearby
towns and to other states, forcing them to seek other occupations.
Scores of banks closed their doors because of this one insect, which
punctured the squares of the cotton to lay its eggs, causing them to
flare and either hang and dry on the plant, or fall to the ground.
Land values fell, not only 50 per cent, but frequently they dropped
to one-third or even one-fifth of their former value. Families who
had lived proudly on the same plantations for generations lost their
lands and homes, and in thousands of eases were left practically pen-