INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 205 



rains fallen, which so completely annihilated them, that 

 it was difficult to meet with a single individual 3 . 



If we quit the orchard and fruit-garden for a walk in 

 our plantations and groves, we shall still be forced to wit- 

 ness the sad effects of insect devastation; and when we see, 

 as sometimes happens, the hedges and trees entirely de- 

 prived of their foliage, and ourselves of the shade we love 

 from the fervid beam of the noon-day sun; when the sing- 

 ing birds have deserted them ; and all their music, which 

 lias so often enchanted us by its melody, variety, and sweet- 

 ness, has ceased — we shall be tempted in our hearts to 

 wish the whole insect race was blotted from the page of 

 creation. Numerous are the agents employed in this work 

 of destruction. Amongst the beetles, various cockchafers 

 (Melolontka vulgaris, solstitialis, and horticola, F.) in their 

 perfect state act as conspicuous a part in injuring the trees, 

 as their grubs do in destroying the herbage. Besides the 

 leaves of fruit-trees, they devour those of the sycamore, 

 the lime, the beech, the willow, and the elm. They are 

 sometimes, especially the common one, astonishingly nu- 

 merous. Mouffet relates (but one would think that there 

 must be some mistake in the date, since they are never 

 so early in their appearance,) that on the 24th of February 

 1574* such a number of them fell into the river Severn as 

 to stop the wheels of the water-mills b . It is also recorded 

 in the Philosophical Transactions, that in 1688 they filled 

 the hedges and trees of part of the county of Galway in 

 such infinite numbers, as to cling to each other in clusters 

 like bees when they swarm; on the wing they darkened the 

 air, and produced a sound like that of distant drums. 

 * Reaum. ii. 122, h Mouffet, 160. 



