230 BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



length, eight feet high, and some forty feet thick at the base. 

 The putrefaction of this mountain of grasshoppers caused a 

 terrible visitation of typhoid fever in India. The whole thing 

 is described in the official documents of India, and I must 

 confess that I am credulous enough to believe it. You can. 

 do as you please with regard to it. 



One word with regard to the necessity of farmers discrim- 

 inating, as Prof. Smith has very properly said, between their 

 enemies and their friends. The value of insects as fertilizers 

 of plants cannot be overestimated. Those of you who have 

 never investigated the subject may perhaps be surprised when 

 I tell you, what is admitted I believe, by all scientific men 

 who have turned their attention to it, — that our crop of red 

 clover seed depends upon what, in common language is called 

 the " bumble bee." If the " bumble-bee" cannot work among 

 the clover, it is not fertilized, and clover seed cannot be made. 

 The "bumble-bee" is the very best friend of the farmer, 

 "where clover is cultivated for its seed. It is astonishing what 

 Providence has done, in the adaptation of insects and birds 

 to the exigencies of plants, with reference to their propaga- 

 tion. There is a beautiful species of orchid growing in a lim- 

 ited district of South America, the pistils and stamens of 

 which are separated from each other by a very considerable 

 interval, and both of them are in the same horizontal line. 

 Tiie question is, how that pollen shall be scattered so as to 

 fertilize the pistil, in order to propagate the seeds of the plant. 

 This orchid is ver}^ peculiar. Tliere is a tube over the pistil 

 and a tube over the stamen. The tube over the stamen is a 

 contorted tube, so that you cannot push a straight stick 

 through it. Now, there is a luimming bird, known only to 

 South America, known only in the district where this orchid 

 is cultivated, that has a bill which is contorted, and the con- 

 tortion is such as exactly to coincide with the contortion of 

 the tube of the plant. The effect is, that this humming bird 

 can only obtain its subsistence in the country where this 

 orchid grows. His crooked bill is inserted into the crooked 

 tube, and in shaking about the stamen of the orchid, in order 

 to obtain the honey which lies at its root, he fertilizes the 

 pistil. 



