TNSECTS BENEFICIAL TO AGRICULTURE. '2 



j\ i 



The Currant-worm (Nematus ventn K This 



Baw-fly larva or false caterpillar is far more destructive than 

 all other in imbined to currant and § rry shrubs, 



sincr the voracious larvae appear in successive bro 

 The female, without having paired with the male, dep 

 her whitish cylindrica along the under side of the mid- 



ribs. In four days the worms hatch, and eighl days after 

 become fully fed, burrow into the ground, remaining 

 the pupa state about a fortnight. 



Remedies. Powdered hellebore or pyrethrum mixed with four or 

 five times its bulk of cheap dour will, if constantly applied, save the 

 crop, 



Insects Beneficial to Agriculture. 



In a great variety of ways certain insects are helpful to 

 man, and are especially efficacious either in ensuring his 

 crops or in destroying those insects which would otherwise 

 devour them. 



Fertilizers of Fruit-trees.- A very important part in the 

 production of abundant crops of fruit is played by bees and 

 other honey- or nectar-gatherers, and pollen-feeding insi 

 [t is now generally acknowledged that bees, especially the 

 honey-bee, act as " marriage-priests" in the fertilization of 

 flowers, conveying pollen from flower to flower, and thus 

 ensuring the "setting" of the fruit. Orchards in which 

 bee-hives are placed hear heavier crops than those not thus 

 favored. Bees are in Europe profitably introduced into 

 peach-houses in order to effect the pollination of the flovi 

 .Many wasps, as well as butterflies and moths. 

 pollen-eating beetles, Thrips, and other insects, by uncon- 

 sciously bearing pollen from distant flowers, 

 close in-and-in breeding. Indeed, a- Goetlu said, flowers 

 and insects were made for each other.* M tswould 



* " For it is not too ninth to say thai if. on th< h ind, Bo 1 



are in many cases necessary to the existenci of 

 the other hand, are still more indispensable to the 



