INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. IQl 



which you will readily perceive have an intimate bearing upon it ; and I 

 shall, therefore, proceed to point out the more evident benefits which we 

 derive from insects, arranging them under the two great heads of rfiVeci 

 benefits, and those which are indirect ; beginning with the latter. 



The insects which are indirecthj beneficial to us may be considered 

 under three points of view ; first, as removing various nuisances and 

 deformities from the face of nature ; secondly, as destroying other insects, 

 that but for their agency would multiply so as greatly to injure and annoy 

 us; and, thirdly, as supplying/ooJ to useful animals, particularly lofsh 

 and birds. 



To advert in the first place to the former. All substances must be 

 regarded as nuisances and deformities, when considered with relation to the 

 whole, which are deprived of the principle of animation. In this relation 

 stand a dead carcass, a dead tree, or a mass of excrement, which are 

 clearly incumbrances that it is desirable to have removed ; and the ofiice 

 of effecting this removal is chiefly assigned to insects, which have been 

 justly called the great scavengers of nature. Let us consider their little 

 but effective operations in each of their vocations. 



How disgusting to the eye, how offensive to the smell, would be the 

 whole face of nature, were the vast quantity of excrement daily falling to 

 the earth from the various animals which inhabit it, suffered (o remain 

 until gradually dissolved by the rain, or decomposed by the elements ! 

 That it does not thus offend us, we are indebted to an inconceivable host of 

 insects which attack it the moment it falls ; some immediately beginning 

 to devour it, others depositing in it eggs from which are soon hatched 

 larvae that concur in the same office with tenfold voracity ; and thus every 

 particle of dung, at least of the most offensive kinds, speedily swarms 

 with inhabitants which consume all the liquid and noisome particles, 

 leaving nothing but the undigested remains, that soon dry, and are scat- 

 tered by the winds, while the grass upon which it rested, no longer 

 smothered by an impenetrable mass, springs up with increased vigor. 



Numerous are the tribes of insects to which this office is assigned, 

 though chiefly, if not entirely, selected from the two orders, Coleoptera 

 and Diptera. A large proportion of the genera formed, by different 

 authors, from Scarabceus of Linne, viz. Scarabaus, Copris, Ateuchus, 

 Sisyphus, Onitis, Onthophagus, Aphodius, and Psammodius ; also His- 

 ter, Sphceridium ; and amongst the Brachyptera, the majority of the Sta- 

 phyUnida, many Aleochara, especially of Gravenhorst's third family, 

 many Oxyteli, and some Omalia, Tachini, and Tachypori, of that author, 

 including in the whole many hundred species of beetles, unite their labors 

 to effect this useful purpose : and what is remarkable, though they all 

 work their way in these filthy masses, and at first can have no paths, yet 

 their bodies are never soiled by the ordure they inhabit. Many of these 

 insects content themselves with burrowing in the dung alone ; but Ateu- 

 chus pilularius^, a species called in America the Tumble-dung, whose 



• The Coprion, Cantharus, and Heliocantharns of the ancients was evidently this beetle, 

 or one nearly related to it, which is described as rolling backwards large masses of dung, 

 and attracted such general attention as to give rise to the proverb Cantharus pilulnm. It 

 should seem from the name, derived from a word signifying an ass, that the Grecian 

 beetle made its pills of asses^ dung ; and this is confirmed by a passage in one of the plays 

 of Aristophanes, the Irene, where a beetle of this kind is introduced, on which one of the 



16 



