28 Insects Injurious to the Elm. 



though a common enough sight to country people, is one never 

 to be forgotten as long as a man lives. To talk of magnifying 

 the Creator, by ascribing all those movements to " unerring 

 instinct/' is to reduce Almighty wisdom to the cunning of an 

 artist who has made a toy, and is half frantic that it dances 

 when he pulls the strings. How much more consistent with all 

 the plans and operations of nature which He has ordered, to 

 believe that these wanderers have had given them a sufficient 

 intelligence to rule their lives for good, and direct their 

 appetites and passions for the preservation and increase of each 

 particular race. When Natural Theology squeezes the mind 

 out of a poor bird, it stoops almost as low as the bird-catcher 

 who has drawn his net upon a sparrow, and who then twists its 

 neck, because, in the first place, he delights in cruelty, and in 

 the second place it is not the bird he wants. Pretty creatures, 

 putting human wits to shame by your long journeys, without 

 chart or compass, from one flowery land to another, how many 

 risks have you to encounter, like the first Phoenician merchants, 

 or the voyagers for the Golden Fleece, yet how much wiser 

 than they in your unerring course and peaceful purpose, to 

 carry happy voices into every chosen haunt. 



INSECTS INJURIOUS TO THE ELM. 



BY H. NOEL HUMPHREYS. 



It has been asserted that of late years our native elm has 

 exhibited less vigour in its growth, and that, in many in- 

 stances, trees which might have been considered in the vigour 

 of their age have been seized with sudden symptoms of decay, 

 and have rapidly perished. Some have attributed the less 

 flourishing state of this handsome and useful forest tree to the 

 extensive system of drainage now going on, as the elm prefers a 

 damp soil. Others have suggested different causes; some, 

 and apparently with most show of reason, assigning it to the ra- 

 vages of certain insects which burrow between the bark and the 

 hard wood of the trunk, which is the most probable cause. 



Taking this as the most likely cause of a certain amount of 

 decay, the experiments of M. Robert, an eminent French 

 botanist, merit careful consideration. Some years ago the trees 

 of the Parisian Boulevards having shown symptoms of disease, 

 M. Robert, whose experiments in tree diseases were already 

 well known, was consulted on the subject. He attributed then- 

 diseased state principally to the ravages of the larva of a small 

 beetle — Scolytus destructor, and with a view to the prevention of 



