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the shores to decay. Nature uses various methods to produce her countless millions of her creatures, 

 as well as to get rid of them, if she wishes to do so. 



It must very frequently happen that our feathered friends actually, as often as not, feed on 

 the very insects which live on those that are most injurious to our crops. This fact does not 

 seem to be taken into consideration when we take upon ourselves to fancy we know better 

 than Nature what is best for us. 



Some birds certainly eat ichneumons, which, as must be well known, lay their eggs in the 

 caterpillars of moths and butterflies, and instead of the chrysalis turning to a butterfly it merely 

 forms the habitation for its destroyers. No doubt can be entertained but that many species 

 are naturally partly kept in check in this manner; but when an unfavourable season, as a wet 

 one occurs, it tells both ways probably, or the destroyer might be too strong for his enemy 

 and reduce the kind to too low a degree. Nature provides against any such casualty. 



If we have leisure to notice them, how curiously and by what small means Nature some- 

 times keeps in order her creatures ; a small insect even prunes her trees ; for instance even 

 amongst our varieties of roses in our gardens she helps us, perhaps not as we wish exactly, 

 yet she does not allow them to get too luxuriant in her estimation, no sooner is a very strong 

 sucker thrown out than a grub, probably hatched from an egg laid by the parent insect in the 

 exact position required, is hatched, and makes its home the inside of the sucker, descending 

 the shoot and feeding on the centre, leaving the wall for its defence ; well it lives in this 

 manner till of full size, it then turns to a chrysalis, having stopped the vigorous growth of the 

 rose and compelled it to send out side shoots, and thus perhaps throws the plant earlier into a 



