THE STATE ENTOMOLOGTST, 7 



crumpled by the Leaf Grumpier (Phycita nebula, Walsh), mined by 

 the Apple Micropteryx (Micropteryx pomivorella, Pack.); skeleton- 

 ized and tied together by another undescribed worm, which I shall 

 some day name Acrobasis Ilammondii; but they are greedily de- 

 voured by a whole horde of caterpillars, from the tiny Micropteryx 

 to the immense Cecropia worm, some of which confine themselves 

 to the parenchyma, some to the epidermis, some to the tender parts, 

 without touching the veins, while others bodily devour the whole 

 leaf. The sap forms the sole food of some insects, and even when the 

 poor apple tree dies, a host of different insects revel in its dead and 

 decaying parts, and hasten its dissolution, so that it may the more 

 quickly be resolved into the mold from which it had, while living, de- 

 rived most of its support, and through which it is to give nourishment 

 for the young trees which are to take its place. 



Thus we perceive that there is not a single part of the apple tree 

 which is not made to cradle, or to give nourishment to some particu- 

 lar insect, and the same might be said of almost every plant that 

 grows on the face of the earth, even those which produce resinous 

 or gummy substances, or which are pithy in the center, having spe- 

 cial insects which feed upon these parts and on nothing else. There are 

 insects— the gall makers, for instance — which, not satisfied with any 

 existing part of the plants, as such, cause abnormal growths, in which 

 their young are reared. 



Nor are insects confined to vegetables in their recent state. The 

 block of hickory wood, fifty years after it is made up into w r agon 

 wheels, is as palatable to the Banded Borer ( Cerasphorus cinctus, 

 Drury), which causes " powder-post," as it was to the Painted Borer 

 (Olytus pieties, Drury) while green and growing; and a beam of 

 oak, when it has supported the roof of a building for centuries, is as 

 much to the taste of an Anolium as the same tree was while grow- 

 ing, to the American Timber Beetle (Hyleccctus Americanus, Harr.) 

 Some, to use the words of Spence, " would sooner feast on the herba- 

 rium of Brunfelsius, than on the greenest herbs that grow," and 

 others, " to whom 



' a river and a sea 



Are a dish of tea, 



And a kingdom bread and butter,' 



would prefer the geographical treasures of Saxton or Speed, in spite 

 of their ink and alum, to the freshest rind of the flax plant." 



Indeed, it would be difficult to mention a substance, whether ani- 

 mal or vegetable, on which insects do not subsist. They revel and 

 grow fat on such innutritious substances as cork, hair, wool and 

 feathers; and " with powers of stomach which the dyspeptic sufferer 

 may envy, will live luxuriously on horn;" they insinuate themselves 

 into the dead carcasses of their own class ; they are at home in the 

 hottest and strongest spices, in the foulest filth, in the most putrid 

 carrion ; they can live and thrive upon, or within the living bodies of 

 the larger animals, or of those of their own class ; they are at home in 



