174 ORIGIN OF BLIGHT INSECTS. 



of cough, lumbago, catarrh, and rheumatism to be disputed; 

 but in common with other things and persons of ill repute, the 

 treacherous East would seem to bear the burthen of other sins 

 besides its own. In addition to the above acknowledged evils, 

 that "Death in the air" which would seem to be really 

 borne upon the wings of this malicious wind, it is popularly 

 accused of bringing " Life in the air," but in a form which to 

 the vegetable creation is quite as fully fraught with destruction, 

 as are to the animal its poisonous invisible arrows. Besides 

 these, and almost as impalpable, myriads upon myriads of Insect 

 eggs, or as some Inn c it, minute Insects, are supposed to float 

 in the blighting atmosphere, whence, falling in showers on the 

 verdant face of luitmv, they soon become visible in the shape of 

 our Aphis marauders, or of leaf-destroying caterpillars. AVitli 

 the fact, however, that Insect eggs are heavier than water,* 

 the notion of their floating through the air is not quite accor- 

 dant; or granting that they float, from whence they originally 

 came, is still the posing question: a question best answered, 

 perhaps, by the plain and probable inference (adopted by 

 Eennie and other naturalists) that neither our blight Insects, 

 nor their eggs, have ever been aerial travellers ; but that from 

 innumerable minute eggs, laid in autumn on the trunks or 

 branches of tree or shrub, or upon some adjacent objects, they 

 emerge almost simultaneously in spring. Their amazing 

 number is sufficiently accounted for, when we find by the cal- 



Reimie. Insect Transformations, p. 10. 



