By the Rev. T. A. Marshall. 55 
wisdom and the usefulness. It will be enough to prove a case for 
usefulness, when wisdom follows naturally ; since no one will deny 
that it is wise to seek whatever is useful. Without entering far 
into an inexhaustible subject, which has long ago filled volumes, I 
will take a single department of the science, now called economic 
entomology. This has to do with the injuries and benefits which 
the humau race receives from the race of insects. These creatures, 
however weak individually, constitute collectively one of the great 
powers of Nature, which man is obliged to respect ; he must either 
learn to control it, or he must take refuge in flight. It is hardly 
too much to say that we hold our place on sufferance ; our presence 
is tolerated. It is within the resources of insect power to render 
any given country uninhabitable ; to break the staff of bread in that 
country; to realise the terrors of Egypt; to spread death among 
flocks and herds; to rot the forest trees, and blight the produce of 
the garden, together with the hopes of the farmer. I must not go 
into details, but anyone will readily recall accounts of the ravages 
of many species of locust (no traveller’s tales, as is often supposed) ; 
the cattle-destroying tzetze ; the Colorado beetle, which has already 
sent out spies to view the British Islands; the Phydloxera vastatrix, 
which has a price of £25,000 set upon its head by the Australian 
Governments, and 800,000 fr. by that of the French Republic. The 
bleak and watery climate of Great Britain might be supposed to 
offer a substantial check to the destructive forces of insects; and to 
some extent this is the case: yet insects have ruined many an 
English family. Our cereals, turnips, hops, and fruit trees, are all 
_ at their mercy, and the partial failures that occur annually shew what 
Yavages, under unfavourable circumstances, are conceivable. We 
have also innumerable enemies of minor importance, who, if unable 
_ to ruin our fortunes, attack our persons, invade our dwellings, 
plunder our larders, and render domestic life, in some countries, a 
perpetual skirmish. It is not my intention, however, to make a 
catalogue of plagues; a brief allusion to them is enough to shew 
the necessity of organised resistance, with whatever of labour, ob- 
servation, and experiment may be required to render it efficacious. 
On the other hand the advantages which men derive from insects 
