70 



THE PRACTICAL ENTOMOLOGIST. 



to which man himself must pay tribute with his 

 blood. 



" From such cnnsiderations are we not" (says 

 Schrauk, the worthy Bavarian naturalist,) "alarmed 

 for our forests, gardens, and frrovcs? Do not these 

 innumerable millions of insects which incessantly 

 labour at their destruction, confuse our understand- 

 ing when we begin to reckon them, and terrify our 

 imagination which magnifies them ? And can I 

 be believed if I assert, that I discover benifieence 

 in such unspeakable destruction, beauty in these 

 devastations, wisdom in this disorder, and life in 

 this manifold death? Nevertheless it is so. AVhat- 

 ever many may say of nature growing old, the natu- 

 ralist finds her always young and beautiful, always 

 estimable, just as she came from the hand of her 

 Creator, and as she indeed every moment issues 

 afresh from the hand of the Almighty Being. In 

 His hand the youth of nature is continually renewed; 

 and under His all-ruling providence, all the millions 

 of apparently destructive beings only labour in pre- 

 serving her existence and embellishment. 



" Let us here contemplate the whole economy 

 of nature at a general glance, in respect to forests 

 only ; and let us view her as she is, without the 

 aid of man, who often disturbs her general arrange- 

 ment. 



" Insects that feed on wood are not injurious to 

 ligneous plants, except from their dispropoitiouate 

 numbers; and these numbei's, when bft to bounti- 

 ful nature herself, are never disproportionate : two 

 assertions which, however paradoxical they may seem 

 at first sight, are yet admitted by the naturalist, who 

 has proofs of them daily before his eyes, as princi- 

 ples, but which I must here demonstrate, because 

 many person.* who are engaged in studying the works 

 of nature, cither as professional men or as amateurs, 

 are not naturalists. 



" In a work on the Fruitfulness of Plants [also 

 written by Schrank] it is stated that an elm twelve 

 years old in one single year produces 164,500 seeds; 

 which, in the course of another twelve years, (if no 

 accident happened) would become as large trees as 

 their parent: and from this calculation it appears 

 that a succession of mucli more than 26,960 millions 

 of trees might be obtained from one 



" This calculation is made from the fruit only, 

 and not from the blossom of any tree, and is, there- 

 fore, applicable to all other trees. A single species 

 of tree, such as we have them in one of our pro- 

 vinces the most scantily clothed with trees, would, 

 during the life of man, cover a large extent of land 

 with a thick forest, and after a few centuries it 

 would appear as if the whole world had been made 

 for it only — as if it alone would cover the whole 

 extent of dry land. 



" The great multiplicity of organized beings 

 which makes the world as it is at present so beau- 

 tiful, would then have disappeared ; symmetry, 

 which gives a charm to this multiplicity, and which 

 delights the contemplator of nature in exalted en- 

 thusiasm, would have vanished; soon would all ani- 

 mal life in the habitable world be destroyed; a great 

 number of birds which live only on insects which 



eat wood, we have already annihilated, by our pre- 

 supposition that these insects do not exist ; the 

 thick impenetrable forest, which the kind of tree 

 mentioned would cover, would soon supplant every 

 blade of grass, kill every insect intended to live 

 upon it, every bird to which these insects were in- 

 tended as food, destroy all animals living upon 

 grass that could not reach the tops of the high 

 forest trees, and finally kill every beast of prey, 

 which could not at last even find a carcase to satisfy 

 its ravenous hunger., 



" Thia is but too faint a picture of our earth, 

 which, without the insects that live on wood, would 

 be but too true. A wise hand has scattered them 

 everywhere, and given to each kind its particular 

 instinct, its peculiar economy, and great fecundity. 

 With them, order and life are restored to universal 

 nature. On their side, pursued by powerful, or 

 weak, but not less numerous enemies, they unceas- 

 ingly follow the given commands of Providence. 



" The proportion which exists between their in- 

 crease and the occasion for it, and their enemies, 

 secures nature from the devastations which they 

 would occasion, and restores all to the most admira- 

 ble equality. 



" A forest of firs more than a hundred years old, 

 has already nearly terminated its appointed exist- 

 ence. A host of caterpillars first takes possession of 

 the branches, and consumes the foliage. A super- 

 fluity of sap, (the circulation of which is rendered 

 languid by the failing strength of the tree), an un- 

 natural increase of the nourishing juices between 

 the bark and the wood, and the separation of these 

 parts, are the consequences. 



"Another host of insects now appears; they bore 

 through the rind into the inner bark, which they 

 eat, and pierce through; or into the wood, which 

 they pierce and destroy. The diseased trees are 

 now nearly dead ; the numerous destructive in.secta 

 increase with the sickness which attracted them 

 there; each tree dies of a thousand wounds, which 

 it receives externally, and from the enervation which 

 follows hi consequence. The dissolution is accom- 

 plished by a third host of, for the most part, smaller 

 insects, but still more numerous; and these are con- 

 tinually employed in reducing the decayed trunks 

 to dust as soon as possible, while at the same time 

 a thicker forest of young trees, and generally of a 

 different kind, spring out of the earth, which had 

 aff'ordcd nourishment to the dead tree. The first 

 host certainly occasioned the deathly sickness of the 

 forest; the second accelerated its death; and the 

 third accomplished its total destruction. It need 

 not be lamented. These trees would have died a 

 few years later, without any utility resulting from 

 their death. Their leafless stems would probably 

 have remained there for half a century awaiting 

 their destruction, of no use where they stood, and 

 serving no purpose but as a fearful trophy of death 

 in the field of life. Tbey must die, because they 

 are organic matter. But we only destroy a worn- 

 out vessel, that a better may take its place, but are 

 not able to make anything better out of it. It is 

 not so with nature. Millions of sensitive beings 



