INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS, 97 



some parts of France, that people had been poisoned by eating vorm- 

 eaten peas, and they were forbidden by authority to be exposed for sale 

 in the market ; but the fears of the public were soon removed by the ex- 

 amination of some scientific men, who found the cause of the injury to be 

 the insect of which I am now speaking. l Another species of Bruchus 

 (5. pectinicornis) devours the peas in China and Barbary. A leguminous 

 seed, much used when boiled as food for horses in India, known to Euro- 

 peans by the name of Gram, but in the Tamul dialect called JTo/oo, and by 

 the Moors Cooltee, is the appropriate food of a fourth kind of Bruchus, 

 related to the last, but having the antennae, which in the male are pec- 

 tinated, much shorter than the body. It is, perhaps, B. scutellaris. A 

 parcel of this seed 2 given me by Captain Green was full of this insect, 

 several grains containing two. Indeed, in tropical climates, the see/ls of 

 almost every pod-bearing plant, as of the genera Gleditschia, Theobroma, 

 Mimosa, Robinia, &c. are eaten by some species of Bruchus, as are the 

 cocoa-nut and palm-nut. 3 Molina, in his History of Chili, tells us of a 

 beetle, which he names Lucanus pilmiis, that infests the beans in that 

 country; a circumstance quite at variance with the habits of the Lu- 

 canidcs, which all prey upon timber. This insect was probably a Phaleria, 

 in which genus the mandibles are protruded from the head, like those of 

 Lucanus ; and one species, as we have seen above, feeds upon maize. 



Great profits are sometimes derived by farmers from their crops of 

 clover-seed: but this does not happen very often ; for a small weevil 

 (Apion flavifemoratum), which abounds everywhere at almost all times of 

 the year, feeds upon the seed of the purple clpver, and in most seasons 

 does the crop considerable damage ; so that a plant of the fairest appear- 

 ance will, in consequence of the voracity of this little enemy, produce 

 scarcely any thing. Another species (Apion flawpes) infests the Dutch or 

 white clover. 4 The young plants of purple clover, when just sprung, are 

 often, as Mr. Joseph Stickney pointed out to me, much injured by the 

 same little jumping beetles (Haltica) that attack the turnips. In Germany, 

 where Rape is more extensively grown than with us for the seed, the crop 

 sometimes wholly fails from the attacks of a small grub, supposed to be 

 that of a weevil of the genera Nedyus or Ceutorkynchus, which, piercing the 

 stalks from the base to the summit, deprives the blossom of the due supply 

 of sap, and thus causes it to perish. 3 



But not only, if let loose to the work of destruction, might insects an- 

 nihilate our grain and pulse, they would also deprive the earth of that 

 beautiful green carpet which now covers it, and is so agreeable and so re- 

 freshing to the sight. When you see a large tract of land lying fallow, as 

 is sometimes the case in open districts, with no intervening patches of 

 verdure, how unpleasant and uncomfortable is it to your eye ! What then 

 would be your sensations were the whole face of the earth bare, and not 

 dressed by Flora ? But such a state of things would soon take place if, to 



1 Amoreux, 288. 



2 I have raised plants from this seed, Avhich appear from the foliage to belong 

 either to Phaseolus or Dolichos. 



5 Westwood, Mod. Class of Ins. i. 330. ; and in London's Gardener's Mag. No. 87. 

 p. 287. 



4 Markwick, Marsham, and Lehmann, in Linn. Trans, vi. 142 . ; and Kirbj in 

 ditto, ix. 37. 42. n. 19. 23. 



5 Keferstein in Silbermann's Revue Ent. i. 135. 



H 



