STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 9 1 



Thus we perceive that there is not a single part of the apple tree 

 which is not made to cradle, or to give nourishment to some particular 

 insect, and the same might be said of almost every plant that grows on 

 the face of the earth, even those which produce resinous or gummy sub- 

 stances, or which are pithy in the center, having special insects which 

 feed upon these parts and on nothing else. There are insects — the gall 

 makers for instance — which, not satisfied with any existing part of the 

 plants, as such, cause abnormal growths in which their young are 

 reared. 



Nor are insects confined to vegetables in their recent state. The block 

 of hickory- wood, fifty years after it is made up into wagon wheels, is as 

 palatable to the Banded Borer, {Ccrasphorus ductus^ Drurv,) which 

 causes "powder-post," as it was to the Painted Borer, (Clytus fictiis^ 

 Drury,) while green and growing; and a beam of oak, when it has 

 supported the roof of a building for centuries, is as much to the taste of 

 an Anobium as the same tree was while growing, to the American Tim- 

 ber Beetle, [Hyleccetus Americanus, Harr.) Some, to use the words 

 of Spexce, " would sooner feast on the herbarium of Brunfelsius, than 

 on the greenest herbs that grow," and others " to whom 



' a river and a sea 



Are a dish of tea, 



And a kingdom bread and butter,' 



would prefer the geographical treasures of Saxton or Speed, in spite of 

 their ink and alum, to the freshest rind of the flax plant." 



Indeed, it would be difficult to mention a substance, whether animal 

 or vegetable, on which insects do not subsist. They revel and grow fat 

 on such innutritions substances as cork, hair, wool, and feathers; and with 

 powers of stomach which the dyspeptic sufferer may envy, will live lux- 

 uriouslvon horn; they insinuate themselves into the dead carcases of their 

 own class; they are at home in the hottest and strongest spices, in the 

 foulest filth, in the most putrid carrion; they can live and thrive upon, or 

 within the living bodies of the larger animals, or of those of their own 

 class; they are at home in the intestinal heat of manv large animals, rev- 

 eling in the horse's stomach, in a bath of chyme of I03 degrees Fahr., or 

 in the bowels of man, in an equally high temperature. Some have even 

 been supposed tio feed on minerals, and, not to dwell upon Barchewitz's 

 talc of East India ants, which eat iron, certain it is, that the larvie of our 

 ^lay-flies (Ephemeraj) do eat earth, and I have known the larvaj of the 

 common May Beetle to feed for three months upon nothingbut pure soil; 

 but in both these cases the insects undoubtedly derive nourishment from 

 the vegetable matter which is extracted from the earth by the action of 

 the stomach. 



These facts will serve to show you that, seek where you mav, you can 

 not find a place or a substance in which, or on which, some insect does 

 not feed. They people the skyey vast above, swim at ease in the water, 

 and peneti-ate the solid earth beneath our feet; while some of them inhabit 

 indiflerently all three of the elements at diflerent epochs of their lives. 



Now when we reflect that there are at least half a million — if not a 



