196 REMARKS ON INSECTS. 



others maintain different opinions ; but if I may 

 venture an opinion, and considering the vast at- 

 tention I have paid to the subject, particularly 

 the nature, habits, and effects insects have upon 

 the vegetable kingdom, I think I may be allowed 

 so to do. It is chiefly through bad culture and 

 uncleanliness. 



Having made bold to hazard this opinion, 

 I will give my reasons for so doing, taking 

 as the first example the animal creation. It 

 will be found that bad food, bad drink, and 

 continued filth, (indeed, it is allowed by all who 

 have any knowledge of the subject,) will cause 

 disease and stunted growth, the human frame 

 not exempt, which, through debility of constitu- 

 tion and filth, will frequently cause insects to 

 breed ; and if the animal frame is thus liable to 

 breed vermin, can it be surprising that the vege- 

 table tribe should do the same, through being 

 first diseased, or that pines should become, what 

 is familiarly termed, lousy, any more than the 

 human frame should be subject to the leprosy of 

 that name, and what is still more convincing, 

 that almost every tree or vegetable, like different 

 animals, are subject to different species of in- 



