36 INSECTS INJURIOUS TO FRUIT. 



persistent fighting the Curculio. The year of that one exception had been preceded 

 by a local drought. For several weeks during July and August it had not rained in 

 that neighborhood. Showers were often threatened, so that farmers hurried to secure 

 their hay and grain ; but the rains did not come. The earth became as dry and 

 parched as if it had been in flower-pots and under cover. 



We often complain of the weather. The severe cold pinches us, and is hard to 

 bear, especially as we outgrow the love of skating or sleigh-riding. Excessive heat 

 is equally uncomfortable. Rains, to some, never seem to come exactly at the right 

 time. Crops will be injured in harvest; pleasure parties will be broken up. Long 

 continued droughts, with a brazen sun setting day after day, unmistakably indicating 

 no rain to-morrow, make us feel how powerless we are to avert impending famine. 

 What was planted gives no increase. The pastures fail, " the Grasshopper becomes 

 a burthen," and we complain. But since that season's exemption from the Curculio 

 I have learned to be more patient. These rough extremes have their compensations. 

 I have known a terrible raid of Mosquitoes ended by a cold night in June. The 

 papers in some of the Western States told us that one of the insect enemies of the 

 wheat crop was killed by that same cold night The Chinch bug goes on increasing, 

 and its ravages become more and more serious until arrested by a rain-storm. The 

 Aphides, that sometimes fairly blacken the young shoots of grape vines, will be 

 melted into mere stains by a single shower. Wasps kill their young after the first 

 frosty night. No insects are more attentive to their broods than the wasps, but they 

 seem to know from instinct that the days of these young will be " few and evil," 

 after such a warning. 



For years a species of Thrips had been living on some Sugar Maple trees near 

 my house They had become so numerous that every leaf had its colony, and the 

 foliage had turned grey by reason of their sapping operations. On the 25th of June 

 the mercury in the thermometer rose to 100 in the shade, and next day not a living 

 Thrips could be found on those Maple trees. A slight breeze drifted them in eddies 

 upon the piazza, looking like the seeds and chaff of timothy on a barn floor. 



Almost every one will remember an occasional crop of Plums coming to matu- 

 rity. I have heard of many such instances ; and where there has been a chance to 

 investigate have found that they have been preceded by a summer drought the 

 year before. 



