DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 81 



waste the earth, and famine and the pestilence often fol- 

 low in their train. 



The generality of mankind overlook or disregard these 

 powerful, because minute, dispensers of punishment ; 

 seldom considering in how many ways their welfare is 

 affected by them : but the fact is certain, that should it 

 please God to give them a general commission against 

 us, and should he excite them to attack, at the same time, 

 our bodies, our clothing, our houses, our cattle, and the 

 produce of our fields and gardens, we should soon be 

 reduced, in every possible respect, to a state of extreme 

 wretchedness ; the prey of the most filthy and disgusting 

 diseases, divested of a covering, unsheltered, except by 

 caves and dungeons, from the inclemency of the seasons, 

 exposed to all the extremities of want and famine ; and 

 in the end, as Sir Joseph Banks, speaking on this sub- 

 ject, has well observed 51 , driven with all the larger ani- 

 mals from the face of the earth. You may smile, perhaps, 

 and think this a high-coloured picture, but you will re- 

 collect I am not stating the mischiefs that insects com- 

 monly do, but what they would do according to all pro- 

 bability, if certain counter- checks restraining them within 

 due limits had not been put in action ; and which they 

 actually do, as you will see, in particular cases, when 

 those counter-checks are diminished or removed. 



Insects may be said, without hyperbole, to have esta- 

 blished a kind of universal empire over the earth and its 

 inhabitants. This is principally conspicuous in the inju- 

 ries which they occasion, for nothing in nature that pos- 

 sesses or has possessed animal or vegetable life, is safe 

 from their inroads. Neither the cunning of the fox, nor 



a On the Blight in Corn, p. 9. 

 VOL. I. G 



