LETTER V. 



INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



INDIRECT INJURIES. 



HAVING detailed to you the direct injuries which we 

 suffer from insects, I am now to call your attention to 

 their indirect attacks upon us, or the injury which they 

 do our property ; and under this view also you will own, 

 with the fullest conviction, that they are not beings that 

 can with prudence or safety be disregarded or despised. 

 Our property, at least that part exposed to the annoyance 

 of these creatures, may be regarded as consisting of 

 animal and vegetable productions, and that in two states; 

 when they are living, namely, and after they are dead. I 

 shall therefore endeavour to give you a sketch of the mis- 

 chief which they occasion, first to our living animal pro- 

 perty, then to our living vegetable property ; and lastly 

 to our dead stock, whether animal or vegetable. 



Next to our own persons, the animals which we em- 

 ploy in our business or pleasures, or fatten for food, in- 

 dividually considered, are the most valuable part of our 

 possessions and at certain seasons, hosts of insects of 

 various kinds are incessant in their assaults upon most 

 of them. To begin with that noble animal the horse. 

 See him, when turned out to his pasture, unable to touch 

 a morsel of the food he has earned by his labours. He 

 flies to the shade, evidently in great uneasiness, where he 



VOL. i. L 



