INTRODUCTION OF INSECTS. 137 
ciated with almost every object important to the material in- 
terests of man.* 
The tenacity of life possessed by many insects, their prodi- 
gious fecundity, the length of time they often remain in the 
different phases of their existence,t the security of the retreats 
into which their small dimensions enable them to retire, are 
all circumstances very favorable not only to the perpetuity of 
their species, but to their transportation to distant climates and 
their multiplication in theirnew homes. The teredo, so destruc- 
tive to shipping, has been carried by the vessels whose wooden 
walls it mines to almost every part of the globe. The termite, 
or white ant, is said to have been brought to Rochefort by the 
commerce of that port a hundred years ago.{ This creature is 
more injurious to wooden structures and implements than any 
other known insect. It eats out almost the entire substance of 
* A few years ago, a laborer, employed at a North American port in dis- 
charging a cargo of hides from the opposite extremity of the continent, was 
fatally poisoned by the bite or the sting of an unknown insect, which ran out 
from a hide he was handling. 
The Phyllozera vastatriz, the most destructive pest which has ever attacked 
European vineyards—for its ravages are fatal not merely to the fruit, but to 
the vine itself—is said by many entomologists to be of American origin, but I 
have seen no account of the mode of its introduction. 
{ In many insects, some of the stages of life regularly continue for several 
years, and they may, under peculiar circumstances, be almost indefinitely 
prolonged. Dr. Dwight mentions the following remarkable case of this sort: 
“J saw here an insect, about an inch in length, of a brown color tinged with 
orange, with two antenne, not unlike arosebug. This insect came out of a 
tea-table made of the boards of an apple-tree.” Dr. Dwight found the 
“¢ cavity whence the insect had emerged into the light,” to be ‘‘ about two 
inches in length. Between the hole, and the outside of the leaf of the table, 
there were forty grains of the wood.” It was supposed that the sawyer and 
the cabinet-maker must have removed at least thirteen grains more, and the 
table had been in the possession of its proprietor for twenty years. 
} It does not appear to be quite settled whether the termites of France are 
indigenous or imported. See QUATREFAGES, Souvenirs Wun Natwraliste, ii., 
pp. 400, 542, 543. 
The white ant has lately appeared at St. Helena and is in a high degree 
destructive, no wood but teak, and even that not always, resisting it.—a- 
ture for March 2d, 1871, p. 362. 
