DESTRUCTIVE INSECTS. 11 



of our indigenous enemies or of destructive colonizers may 

 sometimes be arrested by the uniform adoption of these remedies 

 which a knowledge of their history and habits confers. 



6. The excessive appearance of foreign insects is of common 

 occurrence in countries situated within certain geographical 

 limits even at the present day, and although we do not often 

 read of such devastating legions as those which composed " the 

 army of the Almighty, strong to execute his word," (^) we 

 know that parts of Europe occasionally suffer from local invasions 

 of a most alarming and threatening character. On this conti- 

 nent we have witnessed during the last ten years the immense 

 local injury cavised by grasshoppers, seventeen year locusts, wire 

 worms, aphides, curculios, wheat flies, chinch bugs, turnip flies, 

 catworms, palmer worms, and others, and some of these are of 

 foreign origin. 



7. Their ravages might be considered of secondary importance 

 when compared with the terrible visitations of insect pests which 

 have not been uncommon in inhabited countries during the past 

 centu.ry, but they are sufficiently destructive and alarming as to 

 become a subject of national importance. It may be useful to 

 enumerate a few instances of these excessive appearances of 

 insects, by way of contrast to that comparatively mild form of 

 insect plague in Canada, which has been the occasion of this 

 essay. 



8. We are too much inclined to over estimate the decree of 



(1) Every one is familiar with the thrilling descriptions of insect visitations re- 

 corded in the sacred pages : " Stretch out thy rod and smite the dust of the land, 

 that it may become lice throughout all the land of Egypt." — " There came a 

 grievous swarm of flies into the house of Pharaoh and into his servants' houses, and 

 into all tho land of Egypt, the land was corrupted by reason of the swarm of flies." 

 (Ex. iii.)— " And the locusts went up over all the land of Egypt, and rested in all the 

 coasts of Egypt." (Ex. x.)— " And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath 

 eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar, and the palmer worm, my great army 

 which I sent among you." (Joel ii.) 



