RAVAGES OF INSECTS. 215 



the household of Nature seems quite out of proportion to their 

 minute size, and that, though small in body, the miseries they 

 inflict on mankind are on a truly gigantic scale. They destroy 

 and devastate our dwellings, our fields, our meadows, our gar- 

 dens, and our forests : they feed upon our winter provisions, 

 they devour our clothing, they attack our libraries, they torment 

 or even kill our cattle ; and, not content with all these various 

 attacks upon our property, they even venture to assail our 

 persons, as if to mock our pretensions to the lordship of the 

 earth ! 



The celebrated entomologist Eatzeburg enumerates 650 

 species of insects injurious to the forests of Germany alone, and 

 this number may give us some idea of the innumerable hosts 

 which prey upon the vegetable kingdom all over the world. In all 

 their organs, in every stage of their development, the children 

 of Flora are attacked, or even utterly destroyed, over vast tracts 

 of territory by these omnivorous and ubiquitous creatures. 



Locust-swarms often change miles and miles of fruitful fields 

 into a dreadful desert. In the year 1773 the larvaa of the 

 bostrychus xylographicus, or the typographer-beetle, of which 

 about 80,000 were collected on a single tree of moderate 

 size, destroyed above two millions of firs on the Harz moun- 

 tains ; and in the year 1479, the cockchafers were so numerous 

 in Switzerland that they caused a famine, and having been cited 

 before the ecclesiastical court of Lausanne to answer for their 

 misdeeds, were excommunicated by their enlightened judges ! 



These few instances suffice to show how destructive the im- 

 mense multiplication of the herbivorous insects may become: 

 and when we consider how many millions of tiny mandibles 

 are continually at work, grinding, sawing, cutting, maiming, 

 and devouring all plants, from the most humble grasses to 

 the stateliest, trees, we well may wonder how in spite of such 

 attacks our forests still bear such shady canopies, and our fields 

 and meadows such plentiful harvests. 



But Providence, which so admirably maintains the balance 

 throughout the whole economy of the organic world, and com- 

 mands the tides to go thus far and no farther, has also set limits 

 to the ravages of the herbivorous insects. A rainy and change- 

 able spring is alone sufficient to sweep away countless myriads of 

 larvse while casting their skin, and thus rendered more sensitive 



