CHAP. VII. INSECTS DESTRUCTIVE IN GARDENS. 231 



mercy of several insects, which attack different parts : 

 abroad, the sugar cane is in the power of others, which 

 baffle all the care and labours of the planter. One of 

 these is a species of ant, which takes shelter under the 

 root, and renders the whole plant unproductive : such 

 multitudes of this insect appeared, a few years ago, in 

 the island of Jamaica, as both to over-run the country, 

 and put an entire stop to cultivation.* There is 

 scarcely a vegetable in our gardens which is not the 

 prey of one or more of these tiny, but active and in- 

 sidious, enemies. There are some which devour, in- 

 discriminately, every different species which we cul- 

 tivate. Among these we may reckon the caterpillar of 

 a moth (Noctua Gamma, fig. 68.), so named from its 



bearing on its larger 

 wings a silvery charac- 

 ter, resembling that 

 Greek letter. This in- 

 sect swarmed so fright- 

 fully in France, in 

 1735, that the roads 

 were covered with im- 

 mense flocks, which were swarming from one garden 

 to another, while a general idea prevailed that they were 

 poisonous; in consequence of which the people abstained 

 altogether from the use of herbs, t The Aphides, also, 

 are sad destroyers of our flowers and shrubs. 



(243.) Fruits have also their respective and per- 

 severing devourers, who either deface or gradually con- 

 sume them. A small saw-fly attaches its eggs to the 

 lower side of the leaves of the gooseberry, upon which, 

 when hatched, the animal feeds in society ; till, having 

 destroyed the one on which they were born, they separate 

 from each other, and frequently devour so rapidly, that 

 very soon nothing is left but the bare skeletons of the 

 leaves, the almost naked branches, and the half-ripened 

 but shrivelled fruit. The apple Aphis, called, by some, 

 the Coccus, but well known under the name of the 



* Int. to.Ent. vol: i. p. 185. t Id. ibid. p. 193. 



