THE PRACTICAL ENTOMOLOGIST. 



119 



numbers as never, except in a very few localities, 

 to have attracted the attention of the European 

 farmer. Why then, when it reached America, should 

 it have increased and multiplied at such a prodigi- 

 ous rate, destroying the wheat like a devouring fire 

 as it gradually advanced through the country ? 

 The answer is simple. Here it had only three or 

 four parasites to check its increase, and these were 

 of the old-fashioned American type, not so highly 

 improved and developed as the European parasites, 

 that had for ages untold preyed upon it in its na- 

 tive home, and prevented it from increasing there 

 to any alarming extent. The case was pretty much 

 as if Louis Napoleon were to land an army of a 

 hundred thousand Frenchmen, of the highly im- 

 proved Caucasian race, in the United States, and 

 we had nothing to oppose to that army but a crowd 

 of Eed Indians of the old-fashioned indigenous 

 North American type. But in some cases the for- 

 eign invader has scarcely had even an indigenous 

 old-fogyish foe to contend against. To this day it 

 is not known, that any indigenous North American 

 parasite has attacked the Wheat Midge, since it 

 landed upon our shores some forty years ago; and 

 unless it be true, as I believe, that the Thrips of 

 entomologists — not the Thrips of the vine-growers. 

 for that is a plant-feeding insect — preys largely up- 

 on the Wheat midge in its larva state in certain lo- 

 cations in the United States, it is not even known 

 that any indigenous North American cannibal in- 

 sect preys upon it within the limits of the United 

 States, although undoubtedly our American Gold- 

 finch does so to a considerable extent. Can we 

 wonder, under such circumstances, that the foreign 

 invader sweeps the whole country ? Can we won- 

 der that in one single year, as has been proved by 

 ofiicial documents transmitted to the Secretary of 

 the New York State Agricultural Society, the 

 Wheat-midge inflicted upon the single State of New 

 York damages to the enormous amount of fifteen 

 millions of dollars '! During the E«volutiouary 

 War the British forces, as is well known, did us 

 large pecuniary damage. They also accidentally, 

 in the course of the war, imported among us the 

 Hessian Fly, in some straw that their Hessian mer- 

 cenaries brought with them. Let anyone compute 

 the whole amount of pecuniary damage, purposely 

 and directly inflicted upon us during that war by 

 the British Army and Navy, and then go to work 

 and compute the pecuniary damage, that has since 

 that time been indirectly and unwittingly inflicted 

 upon us by the British Army, through fl o instru- 

 mentality of the Hessian Fly; and he will find that 

 the latter amount is a thousand fold as large as the 

 former. 



The plain common-sense remedy for such a state 

 of things is, by artificial means to import the Euro- 

 pean parasites, that in their own country prey upon 

 the Wheat Midge, the Hessian Fly and the other 

 imported insects that aflSict the North American 

 farmer. Accident has furnished us with the bane; 

 science must furnish us with the remedy. It is no 

 use trying to fight White Frenchmen with Red In- 

 dians. The highly improved race may perhaps be 



slightly checked and harrassed by the primitive 

 indigenous foe, but in the end it will be certain to 

 come out victorious. Naturalists diflFer widely, as 

 to what was the origin of the different sets of ani- 

 mals and plants that now exist in different coun- 

 tries, and that have, ages and ages ago, existed in 

 the difi"erent geological epochs, that preceded the 

 advent of iNIan upon the earth. But no naturalist 

 at the present day disputes the fact, that the plants 

 and animals of North America, for example, are, as 

 a general rule, distinct from the plants and animals 

 of Europe, and that, as a whole, they are of an in- 

 ferior and less highly developed type. If it were 

 not so, how could we possibly account for the very 

 singular facts enumerated above? But the scientific 

 mind is always ahead of the popular mind. Vacci- 

 nation, Gas, the Steam-engine, the Steam-boat, the 

 Rail-road, the Electric Telegraph, have all been suc- 

 cessively the laughing-stock of the vulgar, and have 

 all by slow degrees fought their way into general 

 adoption. So will it be with the artificial importa- 

 tion of parasitic insects. Our grand-children will 

 perhaps be the first to reap the benefit of a plan, 

 which we ourselves might, just as well as not, adopt 

 at the present day. The simplicity and compara- 

 tive cheapness of the remedy, but more than any- 

 thing else the ridicule which attaches, in the popu- 

 lar mind, to the very names of "Bugs" and "Bug- 

 hunters," are the principle obstacles to its adoption. 

 Let a man profess to have discovered some new 

 Patent Powder Pimperlimpimp, a single pinch of 

 which being thrown into each corner of a field will 

 kill every bug throughout its whole extent, and 

 people will listen to him with attention and respect. 

 But tell them of any simple common-sense plan, 

 based upon correct scientific principles, to check 

 and keep within reasonable bounds the insect foes 

 of the Farmer, and they will laugh you to scorn. 

 Probably about nine-tenths of the Members of Con- 

 gress and of our different State Legislatures are 

 lawyers, busying themselves principally with Law 

 and Politics ; and the remaining one-tenth are 

 Physicians, Merchants and JManufacturers, with a 

 verj/ small sprinkling of Farmers. Is it to be ex- 

 pected that a crowd of men, whose heads are most- 

 ly full of such important things as Cognovits and 

 Assumpsits and Demurrers and Torts and Caucuses 

 and Conventions, should condescend to think about 

 " Bugs ?" What do they know about Farmers, ex- 

 cept that they have got votes ? Or about Farmers' 

 pockets, except that most of the taxes come out of 

 them ? What do they know or care about Ento- 

 mology, fancying, as most of them do, that Ento- 

 mologists busy tiiemselves exclusively in collecting 

 the greatest possible number of beautiful butter- 

 flies? Talk to them of science, and they smile in 

 your face. They are so perpetually teased and tor- 

 mented by scientific charlatans — wolves in sheeps' 

 clothing — lobbying for legislative assistance for all 

 kinds of ridiculous impossibilities, that they have 

 come to believe firmly, that Science is only another 

 word for Humbug and Imposture. 



I am confident that if one-hundredth part of the 

 pecuniary damage, that is annually inflicted by 



