108 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 
in charge to keep their numbers within due limits, we should no longer 
enjoy the comfort of vegetables with our animal food, and probably soon 
become the prey of scorbutic diseases.1—I must not overlook that sin- 
gular animal the mole-cricket (Gryllotalpa vulgaris), which is a terrible 
devastator of the produce of the kitchen-garden. It burrows under 
ground, and devouring the roots of plants thus occasions them to wither, 
and even gets into hot-beds. It does so much mischief in Germany, that 
the author of an old book on gardening, after giving a figure of it, exclaims, 
“Happy are the places where this pest is unknown!” 
——- The flowers and shrubs that form the ornament of our parterres and 
pleasure-grounds, seem less exposed to insect depredation than the pro- 
duce of the kitchen-garden ; yet still there are not a few that suffer from 
it. The foliage of one of our greatest favourites, the rose, suffers from the 
caterpillars of the little rose-moths, Zinea (Orniv) rodophagella Kollar, 
Lortrie (Argyrotoza) Bergmanniana®, and of several other moths, and 
often loses all its loveliness and lustre ftom the excrements of the Aphides 
that prey upon it. The leaf-cutter bee also (Megachile® centuncularis), by 
cutting pieces out to form for its young its cells of curious construction, 
disfigures it considerably ; and the froth frog-hopper (Aphrophora spu- 
maria), aided by the saw-fly of the rose (Hylotoma Rose), as well as 
others of the same family, contributes to check the luxuriance of its growth, 
and to diminish the splendour of its beauty ; but all these evils are nothing 
compared with the wholesale devastation sometimes made on the roots of 
this shrub by the larvae of cockchafers, which in two years destroyed, 
at Cheneviéres sur Maine in France, 100,000 rose-trees in M. Vibert’s 
nurseries, which he was forced to abandon, Reaumur has given the his- 
tory of a fly (Merodon Narcissi) whose larva feeds in safety within the 
bulbs of the Narcissus, and destroys them; and also of another, though 
he neglects to describe the species, which tarnishes the gay parterre of the 
florist, whose delight is to observe the freaks of nature exhibited in the 
various many-coloured streaks which diversify the blossom of the tulip, by 
devouring its bulbs.s—Sedums, and other out-of-door plants in pots, 
are often greatly injured by having the upper part of their roots gnawed by 
the larvae of a beetle, Otiorhynchus sulcatus. — Ray notices another insect 
mentioned by Swammerdam, probably Bibio hortulana, which he calls the 
deadliest enemy of the flowers of the spring. He accuses it of despoiling 
the gardens and fields of every blossom, and so extinguishing the hope of 
the year.° But you must not take up a prejudice against an innocent 
creature, even under the warrant of such weighty authority ; for the insect 
which our great naturalist has arraigned as the author of such devastation 
is scarcely guilty, if it be at all a culprit, in the degree here alleged against 
it. As it is very numerous early in the year, it may perhaps discolour the 
vernal blossoms, but its mouth is furnished with no instrument to enable 
it to devour them. Lastly, to omit various other enemies of our parterres, 
as the wire-worm, &c., I may mention that universal pest, the ecarwig 
1 Reaum, ii, 337. 
2 Westwood in Loudon’s Gard. Mag. Sept. 1837. 
5 Apis. **, ¢. 2. 0. K. 4 Reaum, iy. 499, 
5 Westwood in Loudon’s Gard. Mag. 1837. No. 85. 
6 Rai, Hist. Ins. Prolegom, xi. 
