INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 185 



length to annihilate them by the torrents of rain which 

 accompanied a hurricane most fatal to the other West 

 India Islands. This dreadful pest was thought to have 

 been imported ^. Besides these enemies, the sugar-cane 

 has also its Aphis, which sometimes destroys the whole 

 crop ^ ; and according to Humboldt and Bonpland the 

 lai'va of Elater noctilnais feeds in if^. 



Two other vegetable productions of the New World, 

 cotton and tobacco, which are also valuable articles of 

 commerce, receive great injury from the depredations of 

 insects. M'Kinnen, in his Tour through the West In- 

 dies, states that in 1788 and ITO-i two-thirds of the crop 

 of cotton in Crooked Island, one of the Bahamas, was 

 destroyed by the chenille (probably a lepidopterous lar- 

 va) ; and the red bug, an insect equally noxious, stained 

 it so much in some places as to render it of little or no 

 value. Browne relates that in Jamaica a bug destroys 

 whole fields of this plant, and the caterpillar of that beau- 

 tiful butterfly Helicopis Cupido also feeds upon if*. That 

 of a hawk-moth, Sjohinx Carolina, is the great pest of 

 Tobacco; and it is attacked likewise by the larva of a 

 moth, Phalccna Rhexice, Smith ^, and by other insects of 

 the names and kind of which I am ignorant. 



Roots are another important object of agriculture, 

 which, however, as to many of them, they may seem to 

 be defended by the earth that covers them, do not es- 

 cape the attack of insect enemies. — The carrot, which 

 forms a valuable part of the crop of the sand-land farms 



* Castle in P/iilos. Trails, xxx. 346. 



'' Browne's Civil and Nat. Hist, of Jamaica, 430. 



"^ Essai sur la Geographic des Plantes, 1 30". 



^ M'Kinnen, 171. Browne ubi swpr. Merian, Ins. Sur. 10. 



* Smith's Abbott's Insects of Georgia, 199. 



