42 Observations on various Insects 



These crops are the nursei-ies of those myriads of flies, gnats, 

 beetles, &c., which disperse, and, settling in the fields, carry with 

 them blight and destruction. , 



Thus the daddy-long-legs luxuriates in pastures, and visits the 

 mangel-wurzel ; the Chlorops and Oscinis (little flies) have 

 their head-quarters in the central shoot or flowei-stem of grasses, 

 attacking our autumn-sown corn-crops in the end of winter ; a 

 weevil {Curculio lineatus) is propagated in clover-fields, but 

 renders pea and bean fields unproductive by its migrations ; and 

 the wireworm finds a permanent asylum in damp pastures. 



These are facts well deserving the attention of the farmer ; and 

 as some insects cannot exist without humidity, because their 

 transformations are arrested, and the larva dies, or the pupa is 

 unable to produce the fly ; so other species only multiply in dry 

 seasons and sandy situations. Moreover, as we know that salt, 

 soda, ammonia, gas-tar, soot, and lime, are destructive to insect 

 life, the farmer could not do a greater service to agriculture than 

 by trying experiments with these substances upon the various 

 pests which may fall under his notice. But unless he records 

 tlie facts, and sends them, however trifling they may appear to 

 be, to some of our journals connected with agriculture, no bene- 

 ficial results can be expected. It is only by the united labours 

 and experience of the many that scientific men can draw conclu- 

 sions on a subject which, like chemistry, has so much concealed 

 from him. A farmer in his field, or a gardener in his garden, 

 may chance to light on a fact in the economy of an insect which 

 the naturalist may have been searching for in vain for years, and 

 it may enable him to comprehend what had hitherto been to him 

 a puzzle or a mystery, and to draw conclusions from it of great 

 practical importance. 



Clover. 



The amount of injury which clover crops suffer from the inroads 

 of insects cannot be estimated. The farmer finds his crop thin, 

 the leaves riddled ; and this is the work of a weevil which will 

 pay a visit eventually to his pea and bean fields.* His seeds 

 fail, not yielding a tithe of the full amount. Let him spread a 

 white napkin in the field, and shake and beat the clover-heads, 

 and he will find the destroyer in myriads, probably in the shape 

 of a little black weevil with a long pointed nose. There are 

 also various caterpillars feeding on the foliage which are less 

 destructive, because they are less numerous, from their being 

 kept under, in all probability, by parasitic flies. It will now be 



* Vido Journal of Roy. Agr. Soc, vol. vii. p. 408, pi. Q. f. 1, 2. 



