142 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



gists Plusia Gamme, from its having a character inscribed in gold on its 

 primary wings, which resembles that Greek letter. This creature affords 

 a pregnant instance of the power of Providence to let loose an animal to 

 the work of destruction and punishment. Though common with us, it is 

 seldom the cause of more than trivial injury ; but in the year 1735 it was 

 so incredibly multiplied in France as to infest the whole country. On the 

 great roads, wherever you cast your eyes, you might see vast numbers 

 traversing them in all directions to pass from field to field ; but their rava- 

 ges were particularly felt in the kitchen-gardens, where they devoured 

 every thing, whether pulse or pot-herbs, so that nothing was left besides 

 the stalks and veins of the leaves. The credulous multitude thought they 

 were poisonous, report affirming that in some instances the eating of them 

 had been followed by baneful effects. In consequence of this alarming 

 idea, herbs were banished for several weeks from the soups of Paris. 

 Fortunately these destroyers did not meddle with the corn, or famine 

 would have followed in their train. Reaumur has proved that a single 

 pair of these insects might in one season produce 80,000 ; so that were 

 the friendly Ichneumons removed, to which the mercy of Heaven has given 

 it in charge to keep their numbers within due limits, we should no longer 

 enjoy the comfort of vegetables with our animal food, and probably soon 

 become the prey of scorbutic diseases.^ — I must not overlook that singu- 

 lar animal the mole-cricket (Gryllotalpa vulgaris), which is a terrible 

 devastator of the produce of the kitchen-garden. It burrows under 

 ground, and devouring the roots of plants thus occasions them to wither, 

 and even gets into hot-beds. It does so much mischief in Germany, that 

 the author of an old book on gardening, after giving a figure of it, exclaims, 

 " Happy are the places where this pest is unknown !" 



The flowers and shrubs that form the ornament of our parterres and 

 pleasure-grounds, seem less exposed to insect depredation than the produce 

 of the kitchen-garden ; yet still there are not a few that suffer from it. 

 The foliage of one of our greatest favorites, the rose, suffers from the 

 caterpillars of the little rose-moths. Tinea [Ornix) rodophagella Kollar, 

 Tortrix (^Argyrotoza) Bergmanniana^, and of several other moths, and 

 often loses all its loveliness and lustre from the excrements of the Aphides 

 that prey upon it. The leaf-cutter bee also (Megachile^ centuncularis), 

 by cutting pieces out to form for its young its cells of curious construction, 

 disfigures it considerably ; and the froth frog-hopper (Aphrophora spuma- 

 ria,), aided by the saw-fly of the rose (Hylotoma Rosa), as well as others 

 of the same family, contributes to check the luxuriance of its growth, and 

 to diminish the splendor of its beauty ; but all these evils are nothing 

 compared with the wholesail devastation sometimes made on the roots of 

 this shrub by the larvae of cockchafers, which in two years destroyed at 

 Chenevieres sur Maine in France, 100,000 rose trees in M. Vibert's nur- 

 series, which he was forced to abandon. Reaumur has given the history 

 of a fly {Merodon Narcissi) whose larva feeds in safety within the bulbs 

 of the Narcissus, and destroys them ; and also of another, though he neg- 

 lects to describe the species, which tarnishes the gay parterre of the florist, 

 whose delight is to observe the freaks of nature exhibited in the various 



» Reaum. ii. 337. 2 Westwood in Loudon's Gard. Mag. Sept. 1837. 



» Apis. **, c. 2. a. K. 



