INSECTS. 229 



other species of red bug that I saw except this one — a two- 

 spotted red bug. The second year, there was very little dam- 

 age done. The third year, these things had entirely disap- 

 peared. Now, somebody had imported that, and since, as 

 Prof. Smith says, the mother of one of these lice that is born 

 in the morning will be a grandmother before night ; you see 

 how rapidly they increase. A single year was sufficient, not 

 only to develop them all over the cultivated portion of the 

 United States, but to send them away up into the farthest re- 

 cesses of the Adirondacks. This illustrates how easily they 

 are imported. If the parasite happens to be imported with 

 them, we see very little of them. Sometimes a peculiar con- 

 currence of circumstances will take place by which the para- 

 site is destroyed ; then insects which have not been seen for 

 years will appear in great numbers, and will be the destruction 

 of certain kinds of crops upon which they prey. 



I do not know whether you have ever investigated a worm 

 called the forest worm. It resembles the canker worm some- 

 what, still more the apple worm. The peculiarity of this 

 forest worm is, that it has notes of exclamation on the back. 

 Commonly, you will see very little of this worm, but once in 

 a while, all the maple leaves will be cut off by its operations. 

 There is a parasite which preys upon it, and when no circum- 

 stance occurs which destroys tliis parasite, the forest worm is 

 kept under, and you know nothing about it ; but if the para- 

 site should be destroyed, you will find no end of maple trees 

 in the woods killed by the operations of this worm. 



Before I sit down, I want to tell a Munchausen story. I 

 am sure that my credit as a man of veracity will be utterly 

 destroyed when I give it, but it is well vouched for by official 

 documents in India. There was at one time a development 

 of the grasshopper in India that was beyond all calculation 

 and beyond all belief. Tlie whole heavens were darkened 

 with it, and so enormously thick was this storm of grasshop- 

 pers that the sun did not shine through them. Well, a furious 

 wind occurred very shortly after this, and dashed them against 



mountain. An examination by government officers showed 

 that there was a pile of these grasshoppers seventy miles ^'^ 



