(;' ; I^DIRoECX INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



millions as to extinguish it. Those that thus patriotically devoted them- 

 selves to certain death for the common good, were but as the pioneers or 

 advanced guard of a countless army, which by their self-sacrifice was 

 enabled to pass unimpeded and unhurt. The entire crops of standing 

 canes were burnt down, and the earth dug up in every part of the 

 plantations. But vain was every attempt of man to effect their destruc- 

 tion, till in 1780 it pleased Providence at length to annihilate them by the 

 torrents of rain which accompanied a hurricane most fatal to the other 

 West India Islands. This dreadful pest was thought to have been im- 

 ported. 1 More recently great mischief has been done to the sugar planta- 

 tions in the island of St. Vincent, by a species of mole-cricket (Gryllotalpa 

 didactyla Latr.), which destroys the young shoots and bores into the plant 2 ; 

 and to those of the island of Granada by the Delphax saccharivora, an 

 homopterous insect, allied to that producing the cuckoo-spit, which attacks 

 the leaves in such numbers and with such voracity, that some plantations 

 which formerly made three hundred hogsheads of sugar per annum, had 

 not made more than eighty or ninety in 1834, at which time, as stated by 

 J. C. Johnstone, Esq., two thirds of the island were suffering from its 

 ravages, and the insect was extending itself to the neighbouring islands. 2 

 Besides these enemies, the sugar-cane has also its Aphis, which sometimes 

 destroys the whole crop 2 ; and, according to Humboldt and Bonpland, the 

 larva of Elater noctilucus feeds on it, as do two weevils (Calandra Palma- 

 rum and C. Sacchari, Guild.), whose history has been given by the late Rev. 

 L. Guilding. 6 



Three other vegetable productions of the New World, cotton, tobacco, 

 and coffee, which are also valuable articles of commerce, receive great 

 injury from the depredations of insects. M'Kinnen, in his tour through 

 the West Indies, states that in 1788 and in 1794 two thirds of the crop of 

 cotton in Crooked Island, one of the Bahamas, was destroyed by the 

 chenille (probably a lepidopterous larva 7 ) ; and the red bug, an insect 

 equally noxious, stained it so much in some places as to render it of little 

 or no value. Browne relates that in Jamaica a bug destroys whole fields 

 of this plant, and the caterpillar of that beautiful butterfly Helicopis Cupido 

 also feeds upon it. 8 That of a hawk-moth, Sphinx Carolina, is the greatest 

 pest of tobacco : and it is attacked likewise by the larva of a moth, 

 Phaltena Rhexice Smith 9 , and by other insects of the names and kind of 

 which I am ignorant; and the coffee plantations in Guadeloupe and other 

 of the West Indian Islands are ravaged by the larvae of a little moth 

 (Elackista Cofftella)^ 



Roots are another important object of agriculture, which, however, as to 



1 Castle in Philos. Trans, xxx. 346. 



2 Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii. proc. x. xxiv. xxxi. 



3 Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. i. proc. xxvii. Ixx. and Westwood, in Mag. Nat. Hist. 

 vi. 407. 



4 Browne's Civil and Nat. Hist, of Jamaica, 430. 



5 Essai sur la Geographic des Plantes, 136. 



6 Westwood, Modern Class, of Ins. i. 347. 



7 At the meeting of the Entomological Society on the 6th June, 1842, Mr. W. W. 

 Saunders read a memoir on Depressaria Gossypiella, a small moth, the caterpillar of 

 which is very destructive to the cotton crops in India. 



8 M'Kinnen, 171. Browne, ubi supr. Merian, Ins. Sur. 10. 



9 Smith and Abbot, Insects of Georgia, 199. 

 1 Gue'rin-Me'neville, Rev. Zool. 1842, p. 24. 



