nd, too late, to be also a very general feeder. As a matter of
fact, after the snakes were destroyed, and even before, it attacked
young pigs, kids, lambs, calves, puppies, and kittens, and also
destroyed bananas, pineapples, corn, sweet potatoes, cocoanuts, peas,
sugar corn, meat, and salt provisions and fish. But with the parasitic
and predatory insects the food habits are definite and fixed. They can
live on nothing but their natural food, and in its absence they die. The
Australian ladybird originally imported, for example, will feed upon
nothing but scale insects of a particular genus, and, as a matter of
fact, as soon as the fluted scales became scarce the California
officials had the greatest difficulty in keeping the little beetles
alive, and were actually obliged to cultivate for food the very insects
which they were formerly so anxious to wipe out of existence! With the
_Scutellista_ parasite the same fact holds. The fly itself does not
feed, and its young feed only upon certain scale insects, and so with
all the rest.

All of these experiments are being carried on by men learned in the ways
of insects, and only beneficial results, or at the very least negative
ones, can follow. And even where only one such experiment out of a
hundred is successful, what a saving it will mean!

We do not expect the time to come when the farmer, finding Hessian fly
in his wheat, will have only to telegraph the nearest experiment
station, "Send at once two dozen first-class parasites;" but in many
cases, and with a number of different kinds of injurious insects,
especially those introduced from foreign countries, it is probable that
we can gain much relief by the introduction of their natural enemies
from their original home.

THE STRANGE STORY OF THE FLOWERS

GEORGE ILES

[From "The Wild Flowers of America," copyright by G. H. Buek
& Co., New York, 1894, by their kind permission. The American
edition is out of print: the Canadian edition, "Wild Flowers
of Canada," is published by Graham & Co., Montreal, Canada.
The work describes and illustrates in their natural tints
nearly three hundred beautiful flowers.]

Imagine a Venetian doge, a French crusader, a courtier of the time of
the second Charles, an Ojibway chief, a Justice of the Supreme Court, in
the formal black of evening dress, and how much each of them would lose!
Where there is beauty, strength or dignity, dress can heighten