CHAPTER IV. 
THE INSECT AS MAN'S AUXILIARY. 
A HUNTER of small birds, in an ingenious academical 
memoir, gives utterance to the following paradox: “Their 
recent multiplication is the cause of the disease in the 
vine and the potato.” 
How should this be? The disease, which first broke 
out in September 1845, is produced, says the author, by 
microscopic animalcules and parasitical vegetation previ- 
ously destroyed by the insects. But these insect-pro- 
tectors of agriculture perished, devoured by birds, im 
1844. The fatal law passed in the May of that year, for 
the protection of the birds, must have multiplied them to such a 
degree, that the insects, driven out and destroyed by them, could no 
longer afford to our plants the succour which defended them against 
their invisible enemies. 
