230 LIFE OF A TREE. 
even in England and France. In the East it 
is of course well known to the reader that the 
plague of locusts both has been and is the most 
terrible of the visitations of Divine Providence, 
in consequence of their eating up every green 
thing, and leaving the country behind them 
with the appearance as if a consuming fire had 
scorched up every plant, shrub, and tree. By 
their attacks on Oak-trees, insects produce the 
little excrescences so useful and well known as 
oak-galls. This disease, however, is not fatal 
to the trees. 
These few remarks upon the diseases of the 
vegetable world, though mere outlines of this 
interesting subject, will help to shew that plants 
are not less liable to the evidences of mortality 
than men and animals. However fair they may 
bid to endure, not for an age but for ever, 
disease marks them as well as us for its own, 
and in some one out of a thousand ways death 
comes at last, even to trees which have braved 
out every opposition for more than a _ thou- 
sand -years. 
After death many important changes take place, 
to which it is necessary to allude before con- 
