ENTOMOLOGY. 



87 



valuable and choice plants are attempted to be 

 cultivated, be too severely censured. This is 

 the daily afternoon supply, which is given to 

 every plant as lar as time will admit, regardless 

 of its requirements. — at least, when this opera- 

 tion is entrusted to men of inexperience, which 

 is but too common ; and this kind of gardening 

 goes on in many places for years. Plants die, 



it is true ; but this is one of the unresolved mys- 

 teries in gardening, which, to some minds, is 

 quite satisfactory, and enables them to account 

 for the loss of plants by violent means. Finally, 

 it has been asked, how often are we to water 

 this or that plant, and the answer usually is, al- 

 ways when it requires it ; let us, therefore, add, 

 and with some earnestness, ««ver before. [Duro. 



ENTOMOLOGY : 



OR, A DISCOURSE ON INSECTS. 



" A wiae hand has scattered tliem every where, and given to each kind its par- 

 ticular instinct, its peculiar economy, and great fecundity." 



"From the gigantic banyan, which covers 

 acres with its shade, to the tiny fungus, scarcely 

 visible to the naked eye, the vegetable creation 

 is one vast banquet, at which her insect guests 

 sit down." The experience of every practical 

 Farmer will bear its testimony to the tnith of 

 this assertion, which we quote from an eminent 

 work on Entomology, not for the purpose of 

 spreading a truth which must be universally ad- 

 mitted by every intelligent observer of Nature, 

 hot as an apologj', or, rather, a reason, for occu- 

 pying a few pages of an early number of the 

 Farmers' Library with the remarks to which it 

 properly leads. 



Experience also teaches every cultivator of 

 the soil that innumerable varieties of this minu- 

 ter portion of the animal kingdom are unbidden 

 and costly "guests" at his own private table — 

 feeding on his industrj-, preying on his means, 

 and diminishing his profits. 



DecandoUo and other Entomological writers 

 have calculated that the number of the.se insects 

 w^hich draw their sustenance from herbivorous 

 plants, amounts to 100,000 species. Some of 

 these feed only on one kind of plant, while oth- 

 ers inhabit a plant in one section, or season, and 

 not in anciher. One species, furui.shed by Na- 

 ture with an organic machinery, admirably 

 adapted for boring or burrowing in the earth, 

 assails the root; another inserts its proboscis in 

 the fibre of the leaf, and extracts only the sap : 

 this eats only the parenchj-ma, never touching 

 the cuticle; that devours the lower surface of 

 the leaf; while a third perforates the stem. — 

 Obedient to its instinct, each individual species 

 industriously contributes its .share to the general 

 desolation; and the practical acquaintance with 

 these periodical ravages which has been forced 

 upon the Farmer, has hitherto produced no 

 (195) 



remedies, or, at best, such only as are partial 

 and uncertain, for an evil so extensive. While 

 the provident housewife industriously destroys 

 the loathsome vennin (cimex lecfularius) which 

 infest her dormitories, her less persevering 

 spou.se, in indolent despair, pennits all the resi- 

 due of the Hemipterous family, undisturbed, to 

 feed on his crops, and then patiently replants, 

 to supply them with a fresh banquet. Content 

 to tread in the footsteps of the ages which have 

 preceded him, he looks at every diverging path 

 with contempt or dismay ; and hence it is that, 

 until of late year.s, improvements in Agriculture 

 have been so much behind the advance of know- 

 ledge m eveiy other useful art. This reproach, 

 it is true, bears less heavily on our day than it 

 did fonnerly. A liberal, intelligent spirit has 

 lately been infused, the tendency of which is to 

 enliven and elevate our s3-stem of Agriculture, 

 and to enhance the reputation of those to who.se 

 hands it is committed ; and of all the occupations 

 of life, which presents a wider or more attractive 

 range to the philosophic mind ? Not that we 

 are to expect eveiy tiller of the soil to overleap 

 the adverse circumstances of his condition, and 

 to penetrate and comprehend the numerous 

 processes in the economy of Nature. But the 

 duty, no le.ss than the interest, of every gentle- 

 man Farmer — by which phrase is intended, 

 merely, him whose days are not all necessarily 

 required for manual labor — prescribes the em- 

 plo3-ment of a portion of his lei.sure hours in 

 pursuits and researches which will not fail to 

 invigorate and embellish his practical know- 

 ledge. To such we would suggest, generally, 

 the importance of a course of reading in Natural 

 History ; and, paiticnlarly, of a competent ac- 

 quaintance with that one. among the most inte- 

 resting of all its branches, called " Entomology" 



