INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS, 97 



some parts of France, that people had been poisoned by eating vorm*- 

 eaten peas, and they were forbidden by authority to be exposed for sale 

 in the market; but the fears of the public were soon removed by the ex- 

 amination of some scientific men, who found the cause of the injury to be 

 the insect of which I am now speaking, ^ Another species of Bruchus 

 (5. pecfinicornis) devours the peas in China and Barbary, A leguminous 

 seed, much used when boiled as food for horses in India, known to Euro- 

 peans by the name of Gram, but in the Tamul dialect called Koloo, and by 

 the Moors Cooltee, is tlie ajjpropriate food of a fourth kind of Bruchus, 

 related to the last, but having the antennae, which in the male are pec- 

 tinated, much shorter than the body. It is, perhaps, B. scutellaiis. A 

 parcel of this seed* given me by Captain Green was full of this insect, 

 several grains containing two. Indeed, in tropical climates, the seeds of 

 almost every pod-bearing plant, as of the genera Gleditschia, Thcobroma^ 

 Jllimosa, Robinia, 6zc. are eaten by some species of Bruchus, as are the 

 cocoa-nut and palm-nut.^ Molina, in his History of Chili, tells us of a 

 beetle, which he names lAicanus ^^//»»(s, that infests the beans in that 

 countrj' ; — a circumstance quite at variance with the habits of the Lu- 

 canidce, which all prey upon timber. This insect was probably a Phalcria, 

 in which genus the mandibles are protruded from the head, like those of 

 Litcanus ; and one species, as we have seen ai)ove, feeds upon maize. 



Great profits are sometimes derived by farmers from their crops of 

 clover-seed : .hut this does not happen very often; for a small weevil 

 {Apion Jlavifcmoratum), which abounds everywhere at almost all times of 

 the year, feeds upon the seed of the purple clover, and in most seasons 

 does the crop considerable damage ; so that a plant of the fairest appear- 

 ance will, in consequence of the voracity of this little enemy, produce 

 scarcely any thing. Another species {Aplon JIavipes) infests the Dutch or 

 white clover.* The young plants of purple clover, when just sprung, are 

 often, as Mr. Joseph Stickney pointed out to me, much injured by the 

 same little jumping beetles {Haltica) that at'.ack the turnips. In Germany, 

 where Rape is more extensively grown than with us for the seed, the crop 

 sometimes wholly fails from the attacks of a small grub, supposed to be 

 that of a weevil of the genera Nedijus or Ceutorhi/nchus, which, piercing the 

 stalks from the base to the summit, deprives the blossom of the due supply 

 of sap, and thus causes it to perish.^ 



But not only, if let loose to the work of destruction, might insects an- 

 nihilate our grain and pulse, they would also dei)rive the earth of that 

 beautiful green carpet which now covers it, and is so agreeable and so re- 

 freshing to the sight. When you see a large tract of land I3 ing fallow, as 

 is sometimes the case in open districts, with no intervening patches of 

 verdure, how unpleasant and uncomfortable is it to your eye ! What then 

 would be your sensations were the whole face of the earth bare, and not 

 dressed by Flora? But such a state of things would soon take place if, to 



* Amoreux, 288. 



2 I have raised plants frora this seed, which appear from the foliage to belong 

 either to Pluiseolus or Dnlidms. 



3 Westwood, Mod. Class of Ins. i. 330. ; and in Loudon's Gardener's 3Iag. No. 87, 

 p. 287. 



4 Markwick, Marsham, and Lehmann, in Linn. Trans, vi. 142—. ; and Kirby in 

 ditto, ix. 37. 42. n. 19. 23. 



* Kefersteiii in Silbermann's Rev^ie Ent. i. 135. 



u 



