No. 105.] 289 



obscurity and becomes wholly forgotten. After a lapse of time, a 

 person observes a minute worm in the ears of wheat which he appre- 

 hends will do mischief. Another sees it, and for a time is persuaded 

 that it does his crops no damage whatever. A student has his curi- 

 osity so far excited that he closely investigates its operations, and 

 records the results of his observations, estimating that in one field 

 twenty bushels of grain, probably a fifteenth part of the crop, had 

 been destroyed. How little is there here to excite alarm. How- 

 many fortuitous circumstances annually occur which cause us greater 

 losses. And now, year after year rolls away, till one generation of 

 the human race has nearly passed out of existence, yet nothing, 

 nothing further is heard of this matter. That student bids fair to 

 sink into the grave, perhaps with the apprehension that posterity 

 will pronounce his early labors tinged with the exaggerations of a 

 juvenile enthusiasm. Butlo, a new epoch unexpectedly opens before 

 us. Suddenly bursting from its long obscurity, it rushes forth with 

 resistless vigor. It menaces the population of entire districts with 

 bankruptcy, and even threatens to wrest from man his " staflf of life." 

 More marvellous still, it overleaps the ocean's vast expanse, it plants 

 itself far in the interior of another continent, and there runs a career 

 surpassing in the severity of its havoc all that had been known of it 

 in its native haunts. And what is this potent enemy ? A diminutive 

 gnat, seemingly too trivial to merit a moment's notice, too impotent 

 to excite an uneasy thought ! — a tiny midge, so puny as to flee from 

 the light of day, so fragile as to be dismembered by a breath, or 

 crushed by the drop of a pin ! Yet man, the vaunted " lord of cre- 

 ation" stands dismayed and powerless before it. He sees his pro- 

 perty wasted to the amount of millions, yet is incapable of resorting 

 to any measure to mitigate the severity of its devastations, or of 

 erecting the slightest barrier to check it in its triumphant progress ! 

 We close this account, then, with the hope that what has now 

 been written ma} be of some avail, not merely in giving the agri- 

 culturist a more intimate knowledge of one of his greatest enemies, 

 but also in enabling the general reader more duly to appreciate the 

 vast value of a branch of natural science but slightly esteemed and 

 but little pursued in this country. Since there is not one of our cul- 

 tivated plants, not one of our forest or fruit trees, not one of our 

 domesticated animals but is frequently attacked and liable to be de- 



[Senate, No. 105.] 19 



