LETTER VI. 



INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



INDIRECT INJURIES CONTINUED. 



Having endeavoured to give you some idea of the 

 mode in which insects establish and maintain their em- 

 pire over man and his train of dependent animals, I shall 

 next call your attention to his living vegetable possessions, 

 whether the produce of the forest, the field, or the garden ; 

 whether necessary to him for his support, convenient for 

 his use, or ministering to his comfort, pleasure and de- 

 light : — and here you will find these little creatures as 

 busily engaged in the work of mischief as ever, destroy- 

 ing what is necessary, deranging what is convenient, 

 marring what is beautiful, and turning what should give 

 us pleasure into an object of disgust. 



Let us begin with the produce of ouvjields. — Bread is 

 called " the staff of life :" yet should divine Providence 

 in anger be pleased to give the rein to the various insects 

 which, in the different stages of its growth, attack the 

 plant producing it, how quickly would this staff be 

 broken ! From the moment that isoheat begins to emerge 

 from the soil, to the time when it is carried into the barn, 

 it is exposed to their ravages. One of its earliest as- 

 sailants in this country is that of which Mr. Walford has 

 given an account in the Linncan Transactions^ taking it 

 for the wire- worm ; but, as Mr. Marsham observed, not 



