MICHIGAN STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 301 



makers for iustance — which, uot 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 {Ceras- 

 phorus cinctiis, Drury), which causes "powder-post," as it 

 was to the Painted Borer {Clytus pidus, 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 

 sm Anobiuni as the same tree was, while growing, to the Ameri- 

 can Timber Beetle {Hylecoetus Ajnericanus, Harr). Some, 

 to use the words of Spence, "would sooner feast on the her- 

 barium 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 inuutritious substances as cork, 

 hair, wool, and feathers ; and with powers of stomach which 

 the dyspeptic sufi'erer may envy, will live luxuriously on 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 

 those of their own class ; they are at home in the intestinal 

 heat of many large animals, reveling in the horse's stomach, 

 in a bath of chyme 102 degrees Fahr., or in the bowels of man, 

 in an equally high temperature. Some have even been sup- 

 posed to feed on minerals, and, not to dwell upon Barche- 

 witz's tale of East India ants, Avhich eat iron, certain it is that 



