AMERICAN HOME GARDEN. 95 



chrysales, they become, by a curious metamorphosis, moths or 

 butterflies ; they are entirely harmless to vegetation, not chew- 

 ing, but sucking their food ; and after living a few days to per- 

 fect and deposit their eggs, they perish. Of those species 

 which assume the form of beetles, having cutting or biting ap- 

 paratus, some are injurious both in the state of larvae and when 

 winged. These do not spin cocoons, but the naked worm or 

 grub passes through a state of torpor and change in the earth. 



Most kinds of insects have periods, recurring at longer or 

 shorter intervals, in which they are unusually abundant and 

 destructive, becoming in a single season a scourge to neighbor- 

 hoods or nations, and again declining to their ordinary num- 

 bers. They also vary greatly with climate, locality, and crop, 

 each of these having its peculiar general classes or species. 

 The soft, slimy insects, as the slug and snail, which are the 

 pests of the garden in moist and foggy island climates, are 

 scarcely known under our bright summer sun, except in pecul- 

 iarly wet seasons ; and many of the insects of hot southerly 

 latitudes disappear as we go north or rise high above the level 

 of the ocean, or are found, like summer visitors, only in the 

 heart of the season. In swampy lands, or by rivers, we find 

 insects that do not frequent the dry uplands ; in sandy locali- 

 ties, those from which clay soils are exempt. 



The pea-bug is not found in corn, nor the wheat-fly in Lima 

 beans, nor the parsley- worm upon the cabbage, but each ad- 

 heres to its appropriate plant or class of plants. Some, how- 

 ever, take a wider range in their depredations. The rose-bug 

 attacks indiscriminately the blossoms of the rose, the peony, 

 or the grape-vine, the leaves of the oak, the elm, or the linden, 

 and the fruit of the cherry, &c. 



Insects that infest or injure garden vegetables, however, do 

 not materially differ south and north, but are found in all. lati- 

 tudes in their specific seasons. In general, they belong to the 

 crop and the season rather than to the particular latitude, a 

 single wet, cool season producing multitudes of the softer slimy 

 insects, which a bright hot summer prevents or destroys. Most 

 species of winged insects, on the contrary, are born and rejoice 

 in the sunlight, and many larvae, as the nest-worm and others 



