JJtUity of Birds In de/lrojhig I/ifeffs. 6l 



j,pomitrymen. Perhaps few parts of the world are inor€ in- 

 . fei^ed_; with noxious iiifeds than the United States. The 

 greater number of thefe iufe6ls are, I believe, natives of the 

 country, though our partiality to the foil which gave/ us birlli 

 ^has not always allowed us to acknowledge this truth. Th«3 

 we give to the Eieflians the honour of introducing among u^ 

 that nioll pernicious infect, the Ileirian-fly, which, for feve- 

 ral years, has committed, an.d dill commits, fuch alarm- 

 ing ravages on fome of our moll valuable grains, par- 

 ticularly the wheat and. the rye. But this infctSl is, un- 

 doubtedly, a native of America. How it came to be, for 

 fo long a time, overlooked, will probably be mentioned in 

 a memoir, couGcrning this and other noxious infe6ls, whick 

 I hope, to publiili. 



*^ Many of the pernicious infe61:s of the United States 

 .feern to be increafing inflead of dimuiifiiing. Some of thefe 

 infe<Ss, which originally confined their ravages to the native 

 or wild vegetables, have fince begun their depredations upon 

 *he foreign vegetables, which are often more agreeable to 

 .their palates. Thus the .IrucJjus pijz, or pea-fly, is a native, 

 and feems originally to have fed, in a great meafure u«iio- 

 ticed, upon the indigenous vegetr^blcs which are allied to the 

 pea : but fince the introdu«5lion of this lad; among us, it is 

 the principal, if not the only, vegetable which fufTers from 

 the ravages of this infeft. The IJeiTian-fly could not origi- 

 nally have inhabited tlie %^eat, the rye_, and other fimilar 

 gramina of this kind, for thefe vegetables are not natives of 

 America. It is now more formidable to us than would bean 

 army of twenty thoufand Heflians, or of any other twenty 

 tlioufand hirelings, fupplied with all the implements of war. 

 The caterpillar, which has begun its ravages upon the leaves 

 of the Lombardy poplar, that contributes fo much to beau- 

 tify our city, is, mofl probably, a native of our woods. It 

 prefers this fine foreigner to the lefs palatable leaves upon 

 which it has been formerly accuftomed to feed. Other in- 

 ftances of this kind might be mentioned. They (liow how 

 very necefTary it is to watch the migrations of infects from 

 the native to the introduced vegetables; and they teach us a 

 truth, not, I think, fufficiently attended toby naturalifls, that 



diffe cnt 



