INSECTS INJURIOUS TO STRAWBER- 

 RIES. 



AN ESSAY READ AT THE JUNE MEETING IN KALAMAZOO, BY PROP. A. 

 J. COOK, OF THE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE. 



I believe it is very common among us American s,wben we are m ignorance of 

 the authorship of a witty, wise, — and I might almost add, foolish, — saying, to 

 ascribe it to the eccentric pastor of Plymouth Church. Therefore, I will say 

 that Beecher says that "doubtless God might have made a better fruit than the 

 strawberry, but, doubtless, God never did." And on this delightlnl occasion, 

 as we behold the innumerable plates full laden with every variety, seeming to 

 vie with each other in their matchless presentation of color and bloom, we feel 

 to echo the phrase. Never did ! You remember in Miss Mulock's Noble Life, 

 where the little boy was sent into the garden and told not to plucii the berries. 

 You also n member when he returned to his good mamma, with the tell-tale 

 stain upon his lips, — how he persistently denied being guilty of disobedience, 

 thus adding sorrow to his fond parent's heart, by the apparent falsehood. But 

 when at last, questioned by "The Noble Life" — the rosy lip-stains being refer- 

 red to as evidence of his double guilt, he made the very triumphant, and 

 doubtless, to his loving mother, the very satisfactory explanation, — that he 

 only opened his mouth, and they popped in. Imagine this a garden, and any 

 of us alone in it, suffering under the cruel injunction of "touch not." Is it 

 not probable that we would show ourselves but children of a larger growth by 

 a personal repetition of the above episode? It is doubtless well to subject 

 children to some temptations, that by resistance virtue may be strengthened. 

 But parents, suffer not yourselves to place such a temptation as the one above 

 recounted in the path of either old or young. And, Mr. President, are not 

 these marvelous exhibitions of the very ne plus ttltra of the quintessence of 

 Nature's most luscious productions demoralizing? 



Just think of the moral tension to which all souls who come hither are sub- 

 jected. To only gaze and nothing more. Sir, we encourage envy, theft, and 

 covetousness. Just manage to close or even turn the vision of this argus-eyed 

 throng, but for a moment, and Avhat popping in there would be. 



And now, Mr. President, if such temptations are too great for us, whom the 

 myriad-minded poet has styled the "paragon of animals," how can we blame 

 the tiny insects, if they come forth to plunder in this realm of matchless 

 beauty, and unrivaled lusciousness. 



I believe it is Wordsworth that says, in speaking of mankind : "The good 

 die first, while those whose hearts are dry as summer dust, burn to the socket." 

 But this is not true of our fruits ; for while our more plebeian fruits are nipped 

 in the bud, tunneled in growth, and feasted on in maturity, while the trunks 



