94 ^Ir. J. Buckland on 



from insects, whilst two only are sufficient to describe the 

 benefits they yield. 



The fecundity of certain insect forms is astounding, the 

 numbers bred reaching such prodigious proportions as to be 

 almost beyond belief. Riley once computed that the hop 

 aphis, developing thirteen generations in a single year, 

 would, if unchecked to the end of the twelfth generation, 

 have multiplied to the inconceivable number of ten sextillions 

 of individuals. Noting the preceding, Forbush says if this 

 brood were marshalled in line, ten to the inch, it would 

 extend to a point so sunk in the profundity of space that 

 light from the head of the procession travelling at the rate of 

 184,000 miles per second would require 2500 years in which 

 to reach the earth. 



Kirkland has computed that one pair of gipsy moths, 

 if unchecked, would produce enough progeny in eight years 

 to destroy all the foliage in the United States. 



A Canadian entomologist has determined that a single 

 pair of Colorado beetles, without check, would multiply in 

 one season to 60,000,000 units. 



The filibusters of old, who carried on their nefarious 

 business chiefly within tropical areas, declared that of all 

 dangers, and of all })ains, they dreaded most the wounds o£ 

 insects. No surgical instrument ever invented by man 

 could inspire more terror than the implements insects 

 possess for piercing, cutting, dissecting, and rending. These 

 appliances, which are used to do battle with animal and 

 vegetable life, are equalled in horror only by the furious 

 ravenousness of the insects. 



Indeed, the voracity of insect life is as astonishing as its 

 power of reproduction. ]\lany caterpillars consume twice 

 their weight of leaves per day, wliich corresponds to a 

 horse eating daily a ton of hay. Forbush says that a certain 

 flesh-feeding larva will consumn in twenty-four hours 200 

 times its original weight, a ]i:ir;illel to wliich, in the lunnan 

 race, would be an infant consuming, in the first day of its 

 existence, 1500 pounds of beef. Trouvelot, who made a 

 special study of the subject, affiims that the food taken by 



