ORDER IIl.—BUGS. 85 
duction, or in its uses—ay, and more so in the injuries it 
is capable of doing! It sometimes seems as if the meanest 
and most trivial of earth’s creatures were created for the 
express purpose of working out the vastest amount of evil! 
as if there was nothing else to distinguish them or make 
them deserving of notice! And when Godlike Man, the 
highest link in the animal creation, the last step between 
the creature and the Creator, when such as he attempts to 
procure renown by the vast amount of injury he can inflict ; 
when, undistinguished from his fellows save by the halo of 
destruction that surrounds him, he mounts the throne of 
human glory by ‘‘ making countless millions mourn”—and 
not a few have clothed themselves with such unenviable 
immortality !—why should it not be so with the meanest 
insects? Independent of its curious construction, why 
should not the subtle manner in which it works a vast 
amount of injury prevent even the vile Shield-louse from be- 
ing passed by unnoticed among those of its order? Let the 
vain man who would imitate it think of the base level to 
which he must stoop, and from this insignificant animal 
learn one of the lessons Nature is every where teaching! 
Probably hundreds have passed through their orchards, 
day after day, without noticing this insect, although myri- 
ads have been in sight. Many well-educated farmers have 
seen their peach-trees covered with brownish warts, and 
have suffered them to wither and die, without dreaming that 
these warts were live animals, sucking the sap, the life- 
blood of the tree; and yet these motionless excrescences 
have laid waste whole orchards, have devastated the fairest 
of bushes and the most fruitful of trees, and in place of fra- 
grance and verdure have left naught but desolation and de- 
cay. ‘They are essentially noxious insects, which, if unmo- 
lested, multiply immensely, and hence should be carefully 
sought upon the branches of our trees, and, as often as they 
make their appearance, destroyed at the point of the knife. 
