INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 131 



or ninety in 1834, at which time, as stated by J. C. Johnstone, Esq., two 

 thirds of the island were suffering from its ravages, and the insect was 

 extending itself to the neighboring islands.^ Besides these enemies, the 

 sugar-cane has also its Aphis, which sometimes destroys the whole crop^ ; 

 and, according to Humboldt and Bonpland, the larva of Elaier noctilucus 

 feeds on it^, as do two weevils {^Calandra Palmarum and C Sacchari 

 Guild.), whose history has been given by the late Rev. L. Guilding."* 



Three other vegetable productions of the New World, cotton, tobacco, 

 and coffee, which are also valuable articles of commerce, receive great 

 injury from the depredations of insects, M'Kinnen, in his tour through 

 the West Indies, states that in 1788 and 1794 two-thirds of the crop of 

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

 chenille (probably a lepidopterus larva^) ; 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 beautiful butterfly Helicopu Cupido 

 also feeds upon it.^ That of a hawk-moth, Sphi7ix Carolina, is the 

 greatest pest of tobacco : and it is attacked likewise by the larva of a 

 moth, Phalcena Rhexia: Smith*', and by other insects of the names and 

 kind of which I am ignorant; and the coffee plantations in Guadeloupe 

 and other of the West Indian Islands are ravaged by the larvae of a little 

 moth (Elachista Coffeella).^ 



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 escape the attack of insect-enemies. — The carrot, which 

 forms a valuable part of the crop of the sand-land farms in Suffolk, is 

 often very much injured, as is also the parsnip, by a small centipede (Geo- 

 philus electricus), and another polypod {Polydesmus complanatus) , which 

 eat into various labyrinths the upper part of their roots ; and they are 

 both sometimes totally destroyed by the maggot of some dipterous insect, 

 probably one of the Muscida. I had an opportunity of noticing this in 

 the month of July, in the year 1812, in the garden of our valued friend 

 the Rev. Revett Sheppard of Offton in Suffolk. The plants appeared 

 many of them in a dying state ; and upon drawing them out of the 

 ground to ascertain the cause, these larvae were found with their head and 

 half of their body immersed in the root in an oblique direction, and in 

 many instances they had eaten off the end of it.^ The larva of a little 

 moth (Hamilis daucella), described by Bouche, feeds upon the seeds both 

 of the carrot and parsnip, covering the umbel with a silken web, and in 

 some years destroys the whole crop.^° 



* Trans. Ent. Soc, Lond. i. proc. xxvii. Ixx. and Westwood, in Mag. JVal. Hist. vi. 407. 



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

 3 Essaisur la G6ographie des Plantes, 136. 



* Westwood, Modem Class, of In^. i. 347. 



6 At the meeting of the Entomological Society on the 6th June, 1842, Mr. W. W. Saun- 

 ders read a memoir on Depressiaria Gossijpiella, a small moth, the caterpillar of which is 

 very destructive to the cotton crops in India. 



« M'Kinnen, 171. Browne, ubi supr. Merian, Ins. Sur. 10. 



' Smith and Abbot, Insects of Georgia, 199. 



« Guerin-Meneville, Rev. Zool. 1842, p. 24. 



» The larvae above noticed were probably those of Fsila Rosa Meigen (Pstlomym Rosa 

 Macquart), which Kollar (p. 161.) describes as attacking carrots, residmg chiefly in the 

 main root near the end. i" Kollar on Ins. inj. to Gardeners, Ice. 155. 



12* 



