108 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



in charge to keep their numbers within due limits, we should no longer 

 enjoy the comfort of vegetables with our animal food, and probably soon 

 become the prey of scorbutic diseases. 1 I must not overlook that sin- 

 gular animal the mole-cricket (Gryllotalpa vulgaris), which is a terrible 

 devastator of the produce of the kitchen-garden. It burrows under 

 ground, and devouring the roots of plants thus occasions them to wither, 

 and even gets into hot-beds. It does so much mischief in Germany, that 

 the author of an old book on gardening, after giving a figure of it, exclaims, 

 " Happy are the places where this pest is unknown ! " 



The flowers and shrubs that form the ornament of our parterres and 

 pleasure-grounds, seem less exposed to insect depredation than the pro- 

 duce of the kitchen-garden ; yet still there are not a few that suffer from 

 it. The foliage of one of our greatest favourites, the rose, suffers from the 

 caterpillars of the little rose-moths, Tinea (Ornix*) rodophagella Kollar, 

 Tortrix (Argyrotoza) Bergmanniana z , and of several other moths, and 

 often loses all its loveliness and lustre from the excrements of the Aphides 

 that prey upon it. The leaf-cutter bee also (Megachile* centuncularis), by 

 cutting pieces out to form for its young its cells of curious construction, 

 disfigures it considerably ; and the froth frog-hopper (Aphrop/iora spu- 

 mmid), aided by the saw-fly of the rose (Hylotoma Rosce), as well as 

 others of the same family, contributes to check the luxuriance of its growth, 

 and to diminish the splendour of its beauty ; but all these evils are nothing 

 compared with the wholesale devastation sometimes made on the roots of 

 this shrub by the larvae of cockchafers, which in two years destroyed, 

 at Chenevieres sur Maine in France, 100,000 rose-trees in M. Vibert's 

 nurseries, which he was forced to abandon. Reaumur has given the his- 

 tory of a fly (Merodon Narcissi} whose larva feeds in safety within the 

 bulbs of the Narcissus, and destroys them ; and also of another, though 

 he neglects to describe the species, which tarnishes the gay parterre of the 

 florist, whose delight is to observe the freaks of nature exhibited in the 

 various many-coloured streaks which diversify the blossom of the tulip, by 

 devouring its bulbs. 4 Sedums, and other out-of-door plants in pots, 

 are often greatly injured by having the upper part of their roots gnawed by 

 the larvae of a beetle, Otiorhynchus sulcatus. 5 Ray notices another insect 

 mentioned by Swammerdam, probably Bibio hortulana t which he calls the 

 deadliest enemy of the flowers of the spring. He accuses it of despoiling 

 the gardens and fields of every blossom, and so extinguishing the hope of 

 the year. 6 But you must not take up a prejudice against an innocent 

 creature, even under the warrant of such weighty authority ; for the insect 

 which our great naturalist has arraigned as the author of such devastation 

 is scarcely guilty, if it be at all a culprit, in the degree here alleged against 

 it. As it is very numerous early in the year, it may oerhaps discolour the 

 vernal blossoms, but its mouth is furnished with no instrument to enable 

 it to devour them. Lastly, to omit various other enemies of our parterres, 

 as the wire-worm, &c., I may mention that universal pest, the earwig 



i Reaum. ii. 337. 



Westwood in London's Card. Mag. Sept. 1837. 



3 Apis. * *, c. 2. . K. 4 Keaum. iv. 499. 



5 Westwood in Loudon's Card. Mag. 1837. No. 85. 



6 Rai, Hist. Ins. Prolegom. xi. 



