ARTICULATES. (505 



ovipositor (egg-placer) of great length. The larva ofthe Pimpla 

 lunator, according to Prof. Emmons, sometimes, in company with 

 the Sirex, deposits its eggs in young maple trees, introducing the 

 ovipositor into the wood, sometimes to the depth of three inches. 

 There is indeed scarcely any organized substance upon which 

 insects are not adapted to prey. Growing vegetables and living 

 animals are alike subject to their attacks, these, when dead, 

 also supply with food many kinds of insects; and even when 

 such substances are decomposed or much decayed, they furnish 

 nutriment to particular species. Hence, though sustaining much 

 damage by the injury which the insects do to plants and trees, 

 man also derives important benefit from them, by their removal 

 of putrid substances, the noxious exhalations of which would 

 poison the air, and thus detract greatly from his health and com- 

 fort. They are frequently useful to plants in bringing the pollen 

 to the pistils, and thus effecting the continuance of the species in 

 cases where it could not be done except by extraneous methods. 

 Large Grasshoppers are in the Levant, dried and consumed for 

 food ; some savage nations eat the large grubs which are found 

 in rotten wood. The Great-Moth, Cossus, which the ancients 

 esteemed as a delicacy, was a larva of some kind ; and a species 

 kindred to this one is at this day eaten in Brazil. Ants are also 

 eaten by the natives in that country. While attending to these 

 uses of insects, we may also refer to that which is made of the 

 Cantharides or Blistering Flies, to that beautiful dyeing mate rial, 

 cochineal, furnished by insects ofthe genus Coccus, to the galls 

 formed on oak trees by the genus Cynips, and which are em- 

 ployed in the arts; to the art of Caprification or causing figs to 

 ripen by suspending upon the trees branches of the wild Fig- 

 tree, (Caprificus,) which is infested by an insect that pierces the 

 fruit and hastens its maturity ; and to manna, used as an agreea- 

 ble food in the East, which, though not directly produced by 

 insects, is made to flow from the Tamarisk mannifera, (manna 

 bearing,) by the puncture of a small species of Coccus. The de- 

 struction of the larvae of some insects by those of others, is in 

 some instances, actually enormous, so that the undue multiplica- 

 tion of insects, which might result from the very great number 

 of their eggs, and from their rapid growth, is counteracted not 

 only by the influence of the many beasts, birds, reptiles and 

 fishes, which feed upon them, but also by the numerous onsets 

 which insects make upon each other. In these, they sometimes 

 show considerable contrivance, availing themselves of traps, ex- 

 cavated in the sand, by which they secure their prey, as in the 

 case of the Ant-lion, an insect, in its perfect state, resembling the 



