30 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



of the forms and habits of insect life. It can scarcely have 

 escaped any one's observation that insect life is getting to claim 

 a full share of the products of the soil. Last evening, a neigh- 

 bor showed me a sample of his potatoes, which are all perforated 

 by the larvae of the May-beetle. And he very natually inquires 

 how to exterminate them. This is an open field for experi- 

 ments. Tlicy multiply beyond enumeration, and may yet come 

 to be as numerous as once on the river Severn, (1574,) when 

 " so many of them fell into the streams that the water-wheels 

 were stopped by them." Did you ever seek to calculate the 

 annual crop of these beetles ? They fly in clouds in the 

 summer evenings, and every pair will annually produce twO 

 hundred grubs. And they constitute only a specimen of a 

 most multifarious and multiplying host of destructive insects ; 

 in which class we will not include the carnivorous musquito, 

 but for illustration, name the cutworm, the striped bug, the 

 black squash bug, and the squash maggot, which, in regular 

 sequence, seek to exterminate every squash vine. 



It would certainly be highly remunerative for every farmer 

 to become acquainted with the habits of insects destructive to 

 vegetation. By experiments, it may be possible to hit upon 

 some remedy, some means of checking the nearer approaches 

 of this invading army. It is, certainly, rather humiliating that 

 such little things can circumvent all the labor and skill of a 

 strong man. And it is quite time that the strong man should 

 set himself to work to circumvent them. But all this seems 

 sadly out of place, when I remember the specimens of cater- 

 pillars, which hung, unmolested, in June last, in such rich 

 network clusters upon the deniided trees, and find myself sup- 

 posing that sucli a sight may indicate the care which the farm- 

 ers of Middlesex County are willing to exert in tliis direction. 

 I do not wish to speak ill of any man, and I do not believe in 

 personal violence ; but if any man is to be ridden upon a rail, 

 or to be decorated with tar and feathers, I think one of the 

 most prominent candidates should be the farmer who leaves a 

 caterpillar's nest to ripen to maturity, and its inmates to fly 

 away to " increase and multiply." But verily, if all such are 

 candidates, you may ask me for the electors. 



These will suffice for out-door illustrations of what invites 

 the investigation of the husbandman. But in-doors, there are 



