Introduction. 9 



the United States were in the habit of destroying the red- 

 headed woodpecker, the great enemy of these insects, 

 because he occasionally spoilt an apple.* The same delight- 

 ful writer and true naturalist, speaking of the labours of 

 the ivory-billed woodpecker, says, " Would it be believed 

 that the larvae of an insect or fly, no larger than a grain 

 of rice, should silently, and in one season, destroy some 

 thousand acres of pine-trees, many of them from two to 

 three feet in diameter, and a hundred and fifty feet high ? 

 In some places the whole woods, as far as you can see 

 around you, are dead, stripped of the bark, their wintry- 

 looking arms and bare trunks bleaching in the sun, and 

 tumbling in ruins before every blast, "f The subterraneous 

 larva of some species of beetle has often caused a complete 

 failure of the seed-corn, as in the district of Halle in 

 1812.J The corn- weevil, which extracts the flour from 

 grain, leaving the husk behind, will destroy the contents 

 of the largest storehouses in a very short period. The 

 wire-worm and the turnip-fly are dreaded by every farmer. 

 The ravages of the locust are too well known not to be at 

 once recollected as an example of the formidable collective 

 power of the insect race. The white ants of tropical 

 countries sweep away whole villages with as much certainty 

 as a fire or an inundation; and ships even have been 

 destroyed by these indefatigable republics. Our own docks 

 and embankments have been threatened by such minute 

 ravagers. 



The enormous injuries which insects cause to man may 

 thus be held as one reason for ceasing to consider the study 

 of them as an insignificant pursuit ; for a knowledge of their 

 structure, their food, their enemies, and their general habits, 

 may lead, as it often has led, to the means of guarding 

 against their injuries. At the same time we derive from 

 them both direct and indirect benefits. The honey of the 

 bee, the dye of the cochineal, and the web of the silk-worm, 

 the advantages of which are obvious, may well be balanced 



* Amer. Ornith., i., p. 144. f Ibid - -> P- 21. 



J Blumenbaeh ; see also Insect Transformations, p. 231. 



