8 IXSECT ARCHITECTURE. 



is valuable to us, has probably proceeded from our contempt 

 of their individual insignificance. The security of property 

 has ceased to be endangered by quadrupeds of prey, and 

 yet our gardens are ravaged by aphides and caterpillars. 

 It is somewhat startling to affirm that the condition of the 

 human race is seriously injured by these petty annoyances ; 

 but it is perfectly true that the art and industry of man 

 have not yet been able to overcome the collective force, the 

 individual perseverance, and the complicated machiner}' of 

 destruction which insects employ. A small ant, according 

 to a most careful and philosophical observer, opposes almost 

 invincible obstacles to the progress of civilization in many 

 parts of the equinoctial zone. These animals devour paper 

 and parchment ; they destroy every book and manuscript. 

 Many provinces of Spanish America cannot, in consequence, 

 show a written document of a hundred years' existence. 

 " What development," he adds, " can the civilization of a 

 people assume, if there be nothing to connect the present 

 with the past — if the depositories of human knowledge must 

 be constantty renewed— if the monuments of genius and 

 wisdom cannot be transmitted to posterity ?" * Again, 

 there are beetles which deposit their larvae in trees in such 

 formidable numbers that whole forests perish beyond the 

 jDower of remedy. The pines of the Hartz have thus been 

 destroyed to an enormous extent ; and in North America, at 

 one place in South Carolina, at least ninety trees in every 

 hundred, upon a tract of two thousand acres, were swept 

 away by a small black, winged bug. And yet, according 

 to Wilson, the historian of American birds, the people of 

 the United States were in the habit of destroying the red- 

 headed woodpecker, the great enemy of these insects, 

 because he occasionally spoilt an apple. f The same delight- 

 ful writer and true naturalist, speaking of the labours of 

 the ivory-billed woodpecker, says, "Mould it be believed 

 that the larvae of an insect or fly, no larger than a gi-ain 

 of rice, should silently, and in one season, destroy some 

 thousand acres of pine-trees, many of them from two to 



* Humboldt, Voyage, lib. vii., cli, 20, 

 t Amer. Ornith., i., p. 144, 



