180 ENTOMOLOGY. 



papers of the Massachusetts Agricaltural Society, caused 

 serious alarm in this country, about thirty years since. At 

 that time, some of our most valuable trees were com- 

 pletely stripped of their leaves, and the crops of the suc- 

 ceeding years blasted by their ravages. I will not speak 

 of the stings of the bee, nor the wasp, nor the Ichneumon- 

 fly, for although I, with others, may have suffered from 

 their venom, the suffering was deserved, and I am in- 

 clined to believe, that in almost every case, in which 

 injuries are produced by these insects, they act on the 

 defensive. 



This order of insects is extremely important. If the 

 injuries produced by them have been minutely detailed, 

 obligations for benefits received shall be as readily ac- 

 knowledged. And here, as strongly, perhaps, as in any 

 order of nature, do we observe the necessity of under- 

 standing perfectly the character of an individual before 

 we decide upon merits of reflecting upon the ends of 

 actions, before we think of them as worse than useless. 

 Thus the protuberances upon our leaves, produced by 

 the gall-fly, while they disfigure them, and in some in- 

 stances greatly injure the tree, thus causing vexation to 

 the possessors, not only are eaten as delicacies by the 

 inhabitants of the Levant, and form a considerable article 

 of commerce at Constantinople, where, preserved, they 

 are exposed for sale, but they also furnish us with a 

 valuable dyeing material ; and what is of still greater im- 

 portance, we are indebted to them for the means of form- 

 ing ink. 



The ant, too little do we think,, when incommoded by 

 this genus, that any of its species are important to man : 

 but we find, upon reflection, that the anatomist entrusts 

 his nicest dissections to the inmates of an ant-hill, with 

 perfect confidence in their skill. The cockroach in 

 Ceylon, is destroyed by a species of ant and in the 

 eighth volume of the Quarterly Journal of Science, Liter- 

 ature and the Arts, is a very interesting paper by a Capt. 

 Bagnald, who says, while in the West-Indies, he had 

 repeated opportunities of watching the movements of 

 these insects ; he saw them often destroy spiders and 

 cockroaches, and upon one occasion, he observed them 



