BENEFITS CONFERRED BY INSECTS. 23 



Keen in the poison'd breeze ; and wasteful eat, 

 Through buds and bark, into the blacken'd core, 

 Their eager way. A feeble race ! yet oft 

 The sacred sons of vengeance, on whose course 

 Corrosive Famine waits, and kills the year." 



With the exception of their not being " engendered 

 by the hazy North," but produced, Uke all other 

 insects, from eggs previously deposited, the descrip- 

 tion of the poet is perfectly correct. A writer in 

 the Entomological Magazine, (No. iii. p. 221,) con- 

 cludes an account of the habits of another species of 

 insect, the Aphis humuli, one which preys upon the 

 hop plant, in the following words: — "From this it 

 will appear that in duty alone, a little insignificant 

 looking fly has a control over four hundred and 

 fifty thousand pounds annual income to the British 

 Treasury ; and, supposing the hop grounds of Eng- 

 land capable of paying this duty annually, which 

 they certainly are, it is very manifest that, in 1825, 

 these creatures were the means of robbing the 

 Treasury of four hundred and twenty-six thousand 

 pounds." 



The advantages which insects produce are, how- 

 ever, more important than the injuries they occasion. 

 To multitudes of our "little trooping birds" they 

 supply food, and that to an extent that no one would 

 at first suppose possible ; for it has been calculated, 

 that a single pair of sparrows having young to main- 



