THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 265 



butterfly, hymenopteron, or coleopteron, is provided more or 

 less abundantly, and one which is always applied to the 

 fabrication of a cocoon, cell, or covering of some kind in 

 which to undergo its transformation. When this gum has once 

 hardened, and assumed its final state of leather-like toughness, 

 it is insoluble in water, and forms a perfect protection from 

 wet. In this cocoon the grub resides during the remaining 

 portion of the autumn, also during the entire winter, and 

 until the following summer: it is contracted in size, but 

 otherwise unchanged in character. Its change to a necro- 

 morphous chysalis does not take place until spring has far 

 advanced, and then that state is but of short duration: 

 fourteen or twenty days suffice to mature the perfect insect, 

 and at the expiration of this it emerges from the tomb, and 

 the same cycle of existence is recommenced and recompleted 

 as before. 



I believe every leaf-eating insect has its parasite, — its 

 appointed enemy, whose office in creation is to keep the leaf- 

 eater in check, and thus maintain the balance of nature. 

 Were it not thus, so vast would be the destruction of vegeta- 

 tion that man himself must perish in the fruitless struggle to 

 maintain life. These insidious parasites, and faithful allies 

 of man, are Hymenoptera, insects of the same class as the 

 flies produced from the slug. 



A word remains to be said about the supposed remedies ; 

 and here I must confess that I am at fault. In England we 

 trust too much to the inventive genius of chemists and 

 druggists. Whenever these gentlemen offer for sale a prepa- 

 ration which they have previously called by some cacophonic 

 name, the little republic of cultivators is delighted to buy, 

 delighted to be taken in, and delighted to grumble at the 

 inefficacy of the nostrum ; and so ends the amusing comedy. 

 In America it is somewhat different; our Transatlantic cousins, 

 having made themselves thoroughly acquainted with the 

 enemy, have had recourse to practical measures with a view 

 to compass his destruction. Sand, ashes, lime, and powdered 

 hellebore, have been tried with great energy ; but the last 

 only has been found reliable. The results of these experi- 

 ments were recorded in the September number of the 

 'Canadian Entomologist' for 1870. 



As soon as the slugs were observed at work in spring they 



2m 



