THE PRACTICAL ENTOMOLOGIST. 



71 



find a use in the remains of these dying trees, and 

 ■under every step of near and approaching death, 

 thousands spring forth endowed with vitality. 



"Each host of these insects are again exposed to 

 destroyers, which put a check to their too great ex- 

 tension. Other insects, and a great number of 

 birds, clear away the caterpillars while they are feed- 

 ing on the leaves, and when they have unilergonc 

 their change, and are lying in the earth, the wild 

 boar comes and ?tirs them out from tlieir place of 

 rest with his tusks, and devours them with the 

 greatest eagerness. Those insects which conceal 

 themselves in the inner bark or wood do not share 

 a better fate. The woodpecker knows where to 

 find them, and draws them out of the deepest holes. 

 When they appear on the bark in the perl'ect state, 

 they have the bitterest enemies in the fly-catcher, 

 the tree-creeper, and all kinds of magpies. Whole 

 boats of the;-'e birds are found where these insects 

 abound in multitudes; but they leave the place and 

 disperse themselves as soon as the superfluity of 

 nourishment is exhausted. In this state all nature 

 is on a perfect cqu Jity ; but man comes, and de- 

 stroys the order — he annihilates the harmony of na- 

 ture, and is astonished at the discordance. First, 

 he sacrifices the wild boar to gratify his palate; 

 takes possession of the wood, and, according to the 

 usual fallacy of taking the consequences for the 

 cause, considers the woodpecker his enemy, and 

 finally, under various pretences, wages war with all 

 the birds of the forest. Insects appear to him too 

 contemptible for his pursuit, too small, too numer- 

 ous, and too well concealed, to reward him directly 

 for the trouble of endeavouring to extirpate them. 

 They may, therefore, go on with thoir occupations 

 tindi.sturbed, and if they carry tham too far, he then 

 complains of Providence. 



"After having wrested the lordship of the woods 

 from the animals, we should pursue with wisdom 

 the economy which heretolbre the animals, from a 

 blind impulse of nature, had practised. We should 

 anticipate nature in her operations, and cut down 

 trees that approach weak old age, or those that are 

 checked in their growth by a stronger tree standing 

 near them, or those that have been killed by light- 

 ning; and the teeth of the boar which prepared the 

 earth for the seeds, should be replaced by the pick- 

 axe, and our tame pigs ought to be employed in 

 digging up the earth-grubs, which the boar was 

 accustomed to do. We only are to blame if our ti 

 nest forests are destroyed," &c. Such are the expres- 

 sions of a practical naturalist on insects which are 

 injurious to forests A similar picture may be 

 formed of those which attack fruit-trees, field fruits 

 of all kinds, and even our domestic animals. 



The result of such coutemplation.3 will be, that 

 we can only protect ourselves from the injurious 

 influence of insects by an ample knowledge of the 

 reciprocal relation in which one stands to another, 

 and in order to obtain this, it is essentially neces- 

 sary to acquire a knowledge of those kinds which 

 are directly or indirectly injurious to man, their 

 difierent stages of life, their nourishment, propaga- 

 tion, duration, and finally their natural enemies. 



Popular remedies for Noxious Insects. 



BY BENJ. D. WALSn, M. A. 



We can scarcely take up an Agricultural Journal, 

 without finding one or more prescriptions against 

 the depredations of Noxious Insects, from the pen 

 of some correspondent. If only a tenth part of 

 these are what they generally profess to be — un- 

 doubted and reliable specifics against the particular 

 Insect that they ai-e intended to combat — it is 

 strange that Agriculturists should be complaining 

 more and more every day of the losses that they 

 sustain from Noxious Insects. The remedies are 

 in print, vouched for as infallible by A. B. or X. Y. 

 Z. Why don't they apply them? 



The real truth, however, is that many of these 

 so-called remedies are demonstrably worthless — 

 many are founded upon a very insufficient number 

 of observations, and may or njay not be more or less 

 partially successful — and only a few of them are of 

 any real value. Human testimony, I am sorry to 

 say, is, as a general rule, to be received with very 

 great caution. It is not that these writers lie wil- 

 fully and deliberately, but that they jump to con- 

 clusions without fully investigating the subject, and 

 having once formed an opinion in their own minds, 

 support it enthusiastically through thick and thin. 

 Just in the same way, if we believed all the testimo- 

 ny that we see printed in every newspaper that we 

 take up, we should come to the conclusion that for 

 every disease of the human body there was an in- 

 fallible remedy. Yet the physicians are as busy as 

 they used to be — the sick obstinately persist in 

 dying, in spite of the Golden Drops or the Specific 

 Elixir — and the Undertaker and the Probate Court 

 find their hands as full as ever. 



More than a century ago the practice of Inocu- 

 lation was introduced into Norway in Europe in 

 order to check the Small Pox, and about the same 

 time, from some unknown cause, the fish suddenly 

 disappeared along the entire coast of Norway. All 

 at once a great outcry was raised against Inocula- 

 tion. It was a ruinous practice, said the Norwe- 

 gians; it was killing oflF the fish, which were their 

 chief means of support. Better that a few men 

 should die of Small Pox, than that they should all 

 die of starvation. The reader smiles, perhaps. 

 But these simple people only made the same mis- 

 take that is so often made in more modern times — 

 confounding the post, quod with i\iii propter quod, 

 the After with the Because. Again, some centu- 

 ries ago, the Goodwin Sands on the South-eastern 

 Coast of England had enlarged so much as to be 

 very destructive to shipping, and government sent a 

 commission to the spot to enquire into the cause and 

 the remedy for the evil. Several rustics were ex- 

 amined without arriving at any definite conclusion, 

 till at last a grey-headed old man gave it as his de- 

 cided opinion, that if they wished to get rid of the 

 Goodwin Sands they must pull down Tenterden 

 Church Steeple. " When that steeple," he argued, 

 "was first commenced, the sands began to accumu- 

 late; as it progressed, they got worse am. worse; 

 j and now that it is finished, they are a terror to all 



