56 NORTH AMERICAN INSECTS. 



Wood-borers or Weevils, but only of those insects 

 which feed on decayed or rotten wood ; and if our 

 farmers call these creatures wood-destroyers, I think 

 the Beetles may with more propriety apply the epithet 

 to the farmers themselves, who really destroy an im- 

 mense amount of timber unnecessarily, and even hire 

 men to help them do so. I allude to the common 

 practice of enclosing our lands with expensive wood 

 fences, which indeed may be necessary in a newly 

 settled country, like the far West, but which are 

 not at all necessary in our old, well-cultivated States. 



I am aware that this subject has been somewhat 

 agitated of late among agriculturists, and I trust these 

 remarks may reach the ears of some who will be con- 

 vinced, with me, that the practice of laying out whole 

 farms with these expensive enclosures, is a wasteful, 

 extravagant throwing away of wood. I believe it to 

 be a fact, that if our country had not been wonderfully 

 favoured with inexhaustible coal-mines, our woodlands 

 would long ago have been deprived of their trees, and 

 fuel would have to be sold by the pound. Now our 

 farmers not only incur the expense of timber and 

 manual labour in building these wooden fences, but they 

 must be at the additional expense of repairing them 

 every pear, and if all this wnv entirely avoided they 

 would actually realize moiv benefit from their estates. 

 It is true, that if there are no fences in the country, the 



