THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 265 
butterfly, hymenopteron, or coleopteron, is provided more or 
less abundantly, and one which is always applied to the 
fabrication of a cocoon, cell, or covering of some kind in 
which to undergo its transformation: When this gum has once 
hardened, and assumed its final state of leather-like toughness, 
it is insoluble in water, and forms a perfect protection from 
wet. In this cocoon the grub resides during the remaining 
portion of the autumn, also during the entire winter, and 
until the following summer: it is contracted in size, but 
otherwise unchanged in character. Its change to a necro- 
morphous chysalis does not take place until spring has far 
advanced, and then that state is but of short duration: 
fourteen or twenty days suffice to mature the perfect insect, 
and at the expiration of this it emerges from the tomb, and 
the same cycle of existence is recommenced and recompleted 
as before. 
I believe every leaf-eating insect has its parasite,—its 
appointed enemy, whose office in creation is to keep the leaf- 
eater in check, and thus maintain the balance of nature. 
Were it not thus, so vast would be the destruction of vegeta- 
tion that man himself must perish in the fruitless struggle to 
maintain life. These insidious parasites, and faithful allies 
of man, are Hymenoptera, insects of the same class as the 
flies produced from the slug. 
A word remains to be said about the supposed remedies ; 
and here I must confess that | am at fault. In England we 
trust too much to the inventive genius of chemists and 
druggists. Whenever these gentlemen offer for sale a prepa- 
ration which they have previously called by some cacophonic 
name, the little republic of cultivators is delighted to buy, 
delighted to be taken in, and delighted to grumble at the 
inefficacy of the nostrum; and so ends the amusing comedy. 
In America it is somewhat different; our Transatlantic cousins, 
having made themselves thoroughly acquainted with the 
enemy, have had recourse to practical measures with a view 
to compass his destruction. Sand, ashes, lime, and powdered 
hellebore, have been tried with great energy; but the last 
only has been found reliable. The results of these experi- 
ments were recorded in the September number of the 
‘Canadian Entomologist’ for 1870. 
As soon as the slugs were observed at work in spring they 
QM 
