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swarms of this vermin ; but these meeting with a contrary 

 wind before they could land, were stopped, and tired with 

 the voyage, were all driven into the sea, which, by the mo- 

 tion of its waves and tides, cast their floating bodies in heaps 

 to the shore. It is observed, that they seldom keep above a 

 year together in a place, and their usual stages or marches 

 are computed to be about six miles in a year. Hitherto their 

 progress has been westerly, following the course of that wind 

 which blows most commonly in this country." 



Mouffet, in his History of Insects, informs us, that in 

 1574, so great a number of cock-chafers were driven into the 

 river Severn, that they altogether hindered the mills from 

 working, and were with difficulty destroyed by the united 

 efforts of the people, and the different kinds of hawks, ducks, 

 and other birds, which devoured them with eagerness. In 

 Normandy, he tells us, that they appear in general every 

 third year. In England, the county of Norfolk seems to 

 have suffered most from their ravages. In 1751, a great 

 many crops were totally destroyed in that part of the country 

 by these voracious insects. 



The devastations of these animals have induced many agri- 

 culturists to seek out the means of destroying them at a 

 small expense, or at least of diminishing their number, often 

 so considerable, that the leaves of an entire forest are com- 

 pletely gnawed by these insects in less than fifteen days. We 

 read in the Philosophical Transactions of the Dublin Society, 

 that the inhabitants of some districts in Ireland had suffered 

 so much from cock-chafers, that they determined to set fire 

 to a forest of several leagues in extent, to cut off the commu- 

 nication with other districts which had not as yet been in- 

 fested. Among the methods proposed for the destruction of 

 the cock-chafers, the following are those which have most 

 generally proved successful. 



First Method. — Flambeaus are made of the thickness of 



