394 RAVAGES OF INSECTS. 



We have little doubt that Mr. Stephens is right, and 

 Germar wrong; but it would be improper to decide the 

 question by analogy unsupported by direct experiment. 

 One thing is certain, that both this family (^Harpalidce, Mac- 

 Leay) and the whole section (Adephaga, Clair ville) are 

 not herbivorous, but carnivorous,* Similar errors will 

 come under our notice, as we proceed, not more defensible 

 than that of the old soldier causing caterpillars in France. 



Even when agricultural produce escapes being devoured 

 at the root, or the young shoots eaten up, the seeds are 

 often made the prey of the grubs of beetles and weevils. 

 Among the first, the gnawing beetles {Bruchidce, Lea(h) 

 are very destructive. In North America, the pea-beetle 

 {Bruchus Pisi, LiNX.) commits such extensive depredations 

 on pulse, that in some districts the sowing of peas has been 

 abandoned as useless. Kalm, the Swedish traveller, hav- 

 ing witnessed these depredations in America, became quite 

 alarmed when he discovered the insect among some peas he 

 had brought to Sweden, lest he should be the means of 

 introducing so formidable a pest.f His fears seem to us to 

 have been in a great measure groundless ; for, probably, 

 the insect may be indigenous to Sweden, as it is to Britain, 

 though from circumstances of climate, and other causes, it 

 is seldom produced in such numbers with us as to occasion 

 extensive damage. It may have been the same or an allied 

 species of grub mentioned by Amoroux as having spread an 

 alarm in France in ] 780, when the old fancy of its being 

 poisonous induced the public authorities to prohibit peas 

 from being sold in the markets. :j: The insect most de- 

 structive to our peas is the pulse-beetle (Bruchus granarius, 

 Linn.), which sometimes lays an egg on every pea in a pod, 

 which the grub, when hatched, destroys. In the same way, 

 clover-seed is often attacked by two or more species of 

 small weevil (Apion, Herbst), known by the yellow colour 

 of their thighs or their feet ; and when the farmer expects 



* See an illustration in p. 181. 

 t Kalm's Travels, vol. i. p. 173. 



X Amoroux, Insectes Venimeux, p. 288. Kirby and Spence, vol. i. 

 p. 177. 



