tained that this little green insect, so called because they know no 

 other name for it, was nothing more nor less than the .fphis mali, 

 or Apple-leaf Louse. And the idea that this louse breeds these 

 worms, is rather more wild than it would be to conjecture that 

 fleas breed bed-bugs. One of our most intelligent and successful 

 farmers, who sometimes wields his pen as well as his scythe and 

 hoe, favored me with the recherche information, that this is the 

 "canker-worm" — at least, said he, it is the very same worm 

 which was called the canker-worm in Connecticut, when I was a 

 boy. Had my good friend asseverated that the moon was made ot 

 green cheese, he would scarcely have surprised me more. I over- 

 heard another gentleman, a graduate of one of our best colleges, 

 recommending to another similxrly educated citizen, to bore his 

 apple trees, fill the hole with sulphur, and close it by inserting a 

 plug " made from the wood of the same free." Methought he 

 ought to have added, that the hole shouM be made with " a sil- 

 ver bullet," or at least that this operation should be done " in the 

 old o' the moon." 



■ Friend Johnson, posterity will only need what I have above 

 stated, to show them that mauger all our vaunted light and intel- 

 ligence, in this, one of the most important branches of natural 

 science to the farmer, and one of the most interesting departments 

 of nature's works to every studious and inquiring mind, our 

 country, at the present day, is sunk in Egyptian darkness. la 

 ditfusive information, so far as respects Entomology, we are lag- 

 ging far behind the subjects of several of the monarchical and 

 despotic governments of the old world. In Germany and Prus- 

 sia, countries which are regarded as much less enliglitened than 

 our own, not merely is a professor of this science deemed indis- 

 pensible in every university, and every agricultural seminary, 

 but its rudiments are taught in all their primary schools. In this 

 country, on the other hand, such a thing as a course of lectures 

 upon this science, has never yet been delivered, except perhaps 

 in one or two of our universities. Indeed much of the very 

 foundation of this science, upon this side of the Atlantic, is yet to 

 be laid. Whole groups and families of our insects have never 

 yet been examined. We have not even names by which to desig- 

 nate a considerable portion of our species. Take this apple tree 



