104 NIGGER. 



the middle of July : when this is accomplished it mois- 

 tens one end of its cocoon, so as to make it easy to come 

 out, and then it climbs up through the earth and takes 

 wing. But the plough and harrow, the operations of 

 which are sure to follow the eating off of the turnip-crop, 

 often turn up and expose the cocoons, so that instead of 

 heing an inch or two below the surface they are laid at the 

 top. The system of crop rotation, however, serves to re- 

 move the fly of the nigger from the food best fitted for its 

 progeny, and it often happens that the flies come to matu- 

 rity in a field of ripening grain, the ears of which they 

 mount, and spreading their wings, float off in myriads to 

 the nearest turnip-field. 



I find a hundred recipes for the destruction of these nig- 

 gers, all of which are moonshine, except one, and this for 

 a wonder is rational. It is this : buy an immense number 

 of ducks, and turn them into your turnips, and they will 

 devour the niggers by millions, and in a few days become 

 as fat as butter. Thus two birds are killed with one stone, 

 the ducks fatted and the turnips saved. When we get on 

 a little farther with our inquiries into the history of ani- 

 mals, especially such little things as insects, you may de- 

 pend upon it, we shall find the best way to check the 

 increase of any hurtful kind, is to encourage any other ani- 

 mal, whether beast, bird, fish or insect, that makes the 

 injurious one its prey. You see Providence has foreseen 

 that the earth might at any time be desolated, or totally 

 unpeopled, by the natural increase of many kinds of ani- 

 mals, and He has provided against it. The tiger-moth 

 caterpillar nearly every year is produced in these islands 

 in sufficient numbers to eat up every green leaf or blade of 

 grass; to starve all our sheep, cows and horses; and so to 



