128 UTILITY AND DESTEUCTION OF EEPTILES. 



arrangements of nature for checking the undiie multiplication of 

 particular species, she has estabhshed a pohce among insects 

 themselves, by which some of them keep down or promote the 

 increase of others; for there are insects, as well as birds and 

 beasts, of prey. The existence of an insect which fertilizes a 

 useful vegetable may depend on that of another insect which 

 constitutes his food in some stage of his life, and this other again 

 may be as injurious to some plant as his destroyer is to a different 

 species. 



The ancients, according to Phny, were accustomed to hang 

 branches of the wild fig upon the domestic tree, in order that the 

 insects which frequented the former might hasten the ripening 

 of the cultivated fig by their punctures — or, as others suppose, 

 might fructify it by transporting to it the pollen of the wild 

 fruit — and this process, called caprification, is not yet entirely 

 obsolete.* 



The perforations of earthworms and of many insect larvae 

 mechanically affect the texture of the soil and its permeability 

 by water, and they therefore have a certain influence on the form 

 and character of terrestrial surface. The earthworms long ago 

 made good their title to the respect and gratitude of the farmer 

 as well as of the angler. Their utility has been pointed out in 

 many scientific as well as in many agricultural treatises. The 

 following extract from an essay on this subject wiU answer my 

 present purpose : 



" "Worms are great assistants to the drainer, and valuable aids 

 to the farmer in keeping up the fertility of the soil. They love 

 moist, but not wet soils ; they wiU bore down to, but not into, wa- 

 ter ; they multiply rapidly on land after drainage, and prefer a 

 deeply-dried soil. On examining part of a field which had been 

 deeply drained, after long-previous shallow drainage, it was found 



* The utility of caprification has been a good deal disputed, and it has, I 

 believe, been generally abandoned in Italy, though still practiced in Greece. 

 See Bkowne, The Trees of America, p. 475, and on caprification in Kabylia, 

 N. BiBESCO, Les Kdbyles du Djurdjura, in Revue des Beux Mondes for April 

 1st, 1865, p. 589 ; also, Aus der Natur, vol. xxx., p. 684, and Phipson, 

 Utilization of Minute Life, p. 59. In some parts of Sicily, sprigs of mint, 

 meniha pulegium, are used instead of branches of the wild fig for caprification. 

 PiTRfe, TTsipopolari Siciliani, 1871, p. 18. 



