NEW INSECTS INJURIOUS TO AGRICULTURE. 713 



ife vT^ vl^ vl^ vf^ vl^ vl^ vl^ ^ ^ viv ^ 



So men have tried to tell the awful hour 



When Christ the Lord would come with waking power 



And rouse the dead from every dell and bower 



To everlasting life ; 

 They've thought to see the slumb'ring tribes of death, 

 Who, long or brief, have lain the earth beneath, 

 Arise and take their new undying breath 



With flame immortal rife. 



But after all, when no one thinks it near, 



The judgment trump will sound its clarion clear, 



And sleeping ones will all the summons hear 



And leave their dreary clod ; 

 Ignoble bonds will burst to loosen out 

 A glorious form with pinions new and stout, 

 Which swift will fly with glad triumphant shout 



Thro' fields of space to God. 



NEW INSECTS INJURIOUS TO AGRICULTURE. 



Almost every year the appearance of some insect or insects injurious to agri- 

 culture, but previously unknown in an injurious capacity, has to be recorded. 

 The present year (1881) has afforded several striking examples, as Crambus vul- 

 givagellus, which has seriously injured pastures, Phytonomus punctatus, which has 

 proved destructive to clover in the State of New York. 



A new Pyralid has also very generally ravaged the corn plants in the South- 

 ern States. These new destructive species may either be (i), recently introduced 

 species from some foreign country ; (2), native species hitherto unobserved, or 

 unrecorded, and new in the sense of not being described; (3), native species well 

 known to entomologists, but not previously recorded as injurious. 



The author argues that in the two last categories, more particularly, we fre- 

 quently have to deal with newly acquired habits, and in the second category with 

 newly acquired characters that in many cases systematists would consider of 

 specific value. In short, he believes, that certain individuals of a species that 

 has hitherto fed in obscurity on some wild plant may take to feeding on a culti- 

 vated plant, and with the change of habit undergo in the course of a few years 

 sufficient change in character to be counted a new species. Increasing and 

 spreading at the rapid rate which the prolificacy of most insects permits, the 

 species finally becomes a pest and necessarily attracts the attention of the farmer. 

 The presumption is that it could not at any previous time have done similar in- 

 jury without attracting similar attention ; in fact, that the habit is newly acquired. 

 The author reasons that just as variation in plant-life is often sudden, as in the 



