50 



most effectual means is, luckily, an exceedingly simple and inexpensive one. It is a well 

 known fact th t alkalies, although so beneficial to vegetable life, are particularly obnoxious to 

 all insects, and consequently all compounds containing these will improve the former and pro- 

 tect them against the latter. Common soap, it will be found, is one of the best preventatives 

 that can be used, and no insect will lay its eggs upon trees that are treated with it. The 

 most convenient way to use it is to boil up as much as is required to the consistency of a thick 

 wash, and then, with a hard broom brush it well over the trunks of the trees ; this should be 

 done about three or four times during the months of June and July. I may here mention 

 that I have used, with very great success, in England, as a remedy against the canker-worm, 

 coarse, common, oil, painted over the bark in the same manner. I have never tried it yet for 

 Coleopterous larvae, but I see no reason why it should not be as useful with them as with 

 Lepidoptera. 



In Entomology, however, as in most other sciences, if the evidences can only be found, 

 man's greatest ally is that marvellous balance of Nature which is so wondrously kept up by a 

 beneficent Providence. When a foe appears in any locality, let it be what it may, we know 

 that, before long, there will be some counter-acting agent provided by Nature; the only ques- 

 tion is— what will be the best remedy to employ until that is developed ? This point, of coun- 

 ter-agents, is an interesting one in the history of the different pests which have devastated our 

 crops from time to time, and deserves much more attention than it has yet received. I am 

 convinced that were parasitical insects, and int^ectivorous birds, reco2:nized as friends and 

 protected as such, there would very soon be a noticeable diminution in the ranks of our insect 

 scourges. When by cultivation of a certain plant, man furnishes a class of insects with their 

 favourite food, he must expect those insects very soon to appear, and should then protect and 

 foster, or even introduce, such birds as will feed upon, and. keep in check, these ruthless des- 

 troyers ; but they in their turn must also be restrained : he must not protect them blindly, 

 or he will soon find that his remedy is worse than the^disease, for they will increase so much 

 that they will be stronger than he, and will be to a greater extent bad masters than they were 

 valuable servants before. This has actually been the case in Australia, and some parts of the 

 United States, with the English sparrows. They were imported in large numbers to check 

 the ravages of insects, and being protected everywhere, very soon increased so enormously 

 that they not only devoured the insects, but also the corn which they were called in to protect, 

 and became so impudent that they drove away all the little warblers and other singing birds 

 which individually (as they lived entirely on insects) were more useful than themselves. 



Amongst birds, there are none which are so useful to the fruit-grower as the various wood- 

 peckers. These active, good natured, beautiful fellows, wage a continuous and relentless war, 

 in our behalf, against those invisible legions which attack almost every tree man wishes to propa- 

 gate. I have frequently stood withio a few yards, watching admiringly, as with their sharp 

 beaks and curious barbed tongues they have dislodged from their snug burrows in the trunk 

 of a tree the fat grubs of some borer, and when they havt found one, they will hold it for a 

 second in their beaks, as if to say, "Look! see how hard I am working for you. Look 

 at this slippery rascal which I have caught and which has eluded your closest search." Poor 

 fellows, their bright livery and confiding nature are too often the cause of their death. It 

 always grieves me to see thoughtless people shooting them. It is such a cowardly act, 

 for they never attempt to avoid you, but work away, as if they had not a moment to lose, 

 in hunting out our enemies, and will allow you to approach within a few feet of them. Many 

 people think that by perforating the bark, in the wholesale way they do sometimes injure 

 the trees ; but it has been shown by the observations of Wilson, the celebrated American 

 Ornithologist, that, on the other hand, it is actually beneficial to them. The absurdity of 

 the charge of "sucking the sap," which has sometimes been brought up against these birds, 

 is at once shown by an examination of their tongues, when it will be seen that it is a physical 

 impossibility. 



The whole of the Canadian Buprestidae are contained in the two tribes Buprestini and 

 dgrilini, and the greater number in the former of these. 



BUPRESTINI. 



In this tribe the front is not usually contracted by the insertion of the antennsD ; the 

 presternum is angulated on the Lides, behind the eoxae, aud its lateral sutures are oblique ; 



