io8 Walks in New England 



the chafers are now heard buzzing amid the 

 bushes and banging against the panes, June- 

 bugs, or May-bees as we call them when they 

 come ahead of time. The gardener unearths every 

 day these curious blundering beetles, whose grubs 

 he will be killing later. The insect hordes are 

 early to arrive and late to depart, in fact, they 

 are always with us, and it is amazing what a 

 number of them live on the herbage and the 

 sylvan foliage. 



In the state of Nature all these inchoate races 

 of minor life are kept in subjection by the birds, 

 but since of late years the birds have been slaugh 

 tered by wholesale to make women s hats hideous, 

 the balance is lost, and hence we have plagues of 

 elm beetles, cottony louses, and gypsy and brown- 

 tailed moths. Thousands of varieties of insects 

 have found their proper food on trees from time 

 immemorial, and might continue to do so without 

 reminding us of the plagues of Egypt, were it not 

 for the women who want birds and feathers of 

 birds on their hats. If the wearers of these 

 slaughtered creatures of God, more beautiful and 

 more useful than themselves, could only see how 

 they look to a lover of Nature, or a mere en 

 lightened farmer and fruit raiser, they would surely 

 discard their egrets, their bird-of- Paradise plumes, 

 their wings, and the whole birds so hideously adorn- 



