•2-H SMALL ANIM^VLS AXD INSECTS. [Chap. IL 



with something sweet that they like to feed upon. Tliese and other insects 

 can he poisoned by arsenic. They may be kei)t tVom tlie sugar-bowl by 

 setting it in a plate covered with powdered chalk. The whisky remedy 

 recommended in No. 254, to protect trees from ants, may be adopted in the 

 house. Tiie bug-powder mentioned in the same number, made of red chamo- 

 mile, can also be used iu tiie house for ants and other pests. For the largo 

 black ant, the best vehicle for poisoa is old cheese. Dip a piece of it in a 

 poisonous solution, or moisten it if dry, and dust it with corrosive sublimate 

 or arsenic. 



Be very careful, in the use of poisons, not to get them mixed with food. 

 There is no more danger, with [jroper care, than there is in keeping gun- 

 powder in the house. 



270. Insects Bcufficlal lo Farmers. — It is not to be inferred that because an 

 animal is called an insect, it is pestiferous. The contrary should be taught 

 in all schools, as well as in home lessons. The false idea is prevalent that 

 all sorts of insects, bees excepted, are mischievous, hurtful, and hateful ; so 

 that every worm, bug, fly, moth, miller, or little crawling, creeping, flying 

 tiling is looked upon by almost every one with a feeling of desire to crush 

 it. A contrary feeling must be cultivated. Children must be taught to dis- 

 criminate between good and evil insects, as well as between good and evil 

 deeds. A cloud of moths might be seen hovering around the wheat, and 

 the farmer, under the sup])osition that they had come to destroy the grain, 

 •might destroy them, and afterward find that he had killed his best friends — 

 the parasites of the wheat destructors. Before we declare a war of annihila- 

 tion, as many have against the birds, upon any class of animals, let us first 

 inquire which are and which are not noxious. "We will here briefly jjoiut 

 out a few. 



Tlie common angle-worm, instead of being detrimental to the farmer, is 

 actually a co-laborer, and often a better one than the biped owner of the soil. 

 A scientific writer on Zoology says : 



" The burrowing of earth-worms is a process exceedingly useful to the 

 gardener and agriculturist ; aiid these animals are far more useful to man in 

 this way, than they are injurious by destroying vegetables. They give a 

 kind of under tillage to the land, performing the same below the ground 

 that the spade does above for the garden, and the plow for arable land, 

 loosening the earth so as to render it permeable to air and water. It has 

 lately been shown that they will even add to the depth of soil ; covering 

 barren tracts with a layer of productive mold. Thus, in fields that have been 

 overspread with lime, burnt marl, or cinders, these substances are in time 

 covered with finely divided soil, well adapted to the support of vegetation. 



" That this result — which is most commonly attributed by farmers to tiie 

 ' working down' of the material in question— is really due to tlie action of 

 the earth-worm, appears from the feet that in the soil thus formed, large 

 numbers of ' worm-casts' may be distinguished. These are produced by the 

 digestive process of the worms, which take into their intestinal canal a largo 



