210 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



firmed to me by Captain Hancock a . Stedman mentions 

 another very large ant, being at least an inch in length, 

 which has the same instinct. It was a pleasant spectacle, 

 he observes, to behold this army of ants marching con- 

 stantly in the same direction, and each individual with its 

 bit of green leaf in its mouth b . The injury thus caused 

 to trees by insects is not confined to the mere loss of 

 their leaves for one season ; for it occasions them to draw 

 upon the funds of another, by sending forth premature 

 shoots and making gems unfold, that, in the ordinary 

 course, would not have put forth their foliage till the fol- 

 lowing year. 



Other insects, though they do not entirely devour the 

 leaves of trees and plants, yet considerably diminish their 

 beauty. Thus, for instance, sometimes the subcutaneous 

 larvae undermine them, when the leaf exhibits the whole 

 course of their labyrinth in a pallid, tortuous, gradually 

 dilating line at others the Tortrices disfigure them by 

 rolling them up, or the leaf-cutter bees by taking a piece 

 out of them, or certain Tinese again by eating their un- 

 der surface, and so causing them to wither either par- 

 tially or totally. You have doubtless observed what is 

 called the honey-dew upon the maple and other trees, 

 concerning which the learned Roman naturalist Pliny 

 gravely hesitates whether he shall call it the sweat of the 

 heavens, the saliva of the stars, or a liquid produced by 



a The same intelligent gentleman related tome, that a person hav- 

 ing taken some land at Bahia in the Brazils, he was compelled by 

 these ants, which were so numerous as to render every effort to de- 

 stroy them ineffectual, to relinquish the occupation of it. Their nests 

 were excavated to the astonishing depth of fourteen feet. Merian /- 

 sect. Sur. 18. Smeathman on Termites, Phil. Trans. Ixxi. 39. note 35. 



1 Stedman, ii. 142. 



