8 



THE YOUNG 



NATURALIST. 



perhaps be trodden under the feet because 

 people do not know them to be edible. The 

 common Copvinus Contains, a fungus which 

 makes a dish more delicous than the mush- 

 room, and more nutritous than a beef steak, 

 grows to waste, and if any person be wise 

 enough to get it, he is sure to be warned 

 by some passer bye — who has as 

 much knowledge on the subject as the 

 generality of people — that it is a poisonous 

 toadstool. Enough has been said to show 

 that a knowledge of botany is not only use- 

 ful to every person, but that it is needful 

 for the preservation of health and life. 



As with botany, so with entomology. The 

 farmer as well as having a knowledge of 

 plant life should also have a knowledge of 

 the insects which affect the plants. The 

 hop produce of this country has been injured 

 by a small insect in one year to the extent of 

 £450,000. In a field of 15 acres at Passing- 

 ham, in the year 1881-2 the damage done by 

 wireworms upon two crops — one of turnips 

 and the other of wheat — was estimated at 

 /186, exclusive of labour. On another farm 

 at Old Alresford the loss by the same insect 

 on 1000 acres is set down by the farmer at 

 £100 per annum. Other insects and many 

 other cases of injury might be named, but 

 these will sufficiently show that we are 

 annually suffering from great losses, and 

 depredations, caused by insects, which 

 might easily be, either greatly diminished, 

 or entirely prevented, if the persons con- 

 cerned had only a sufficient instruction, and 

 proper training in the matter. Of the 

 insect which affect our crops, our clothes, 

 or our furniture, most people are profoundly 

 ignorant. Not long ago a case was tried at 

 Liverpool in which a person sought to 

 recover damages from a furniture maker 

 because the hair linings had been eaten by 

 the larvae of a moth, which feeds exclusively 

 upon animal matter, and he assigned as a 

 reason that the furniture had been stnffed 

 with a vegetable substance, which had bred 



the insects! Not long ago I was staying 

 with a friend at Liverpool, when one 

 morning a letter came enclosing some insects 

 which the writer said had injured his crops. 

 He further said that he had killed all he 

 could, but wished for further instructions 

 in order to prevent the ravages, as he could 

 not keep them under. On opening the 

 parcel we found five species of carnivorous 

 beetles, which never ate a leaf of vegetation 

 in their whole lives, and which had, most 

 probably, been preying upon some vegetable 

 feeding insects which had caused the real 

 injury. So the man had been killing his 

 best friends. The interesting subject of 

 silk-culture requires a knowledge of ento- 

 mology to develop it to a much larger 

 extent than it is at present possible to see. 



Of every branch of natural history the 

 same might be said. The habits of birds 

 and animals are very little understood, even 

 by those luminaries who pretend to make 

 laws for their protection, or those societies, 

 or that society, which commissions itself to 

 see that those laws are carried out. It is 

 all very well to be humane ; it is patriotic 

 to be kind to those animals which are be- 

 neath us in the scale of existence. But such 

 humanity and such kind feeling cannot be 

 taught by Act of Parliament. It should be 

 begun in the cradle, impressed upon the 

 mother's lap, and carried out in the school. 

 But these laws which have been made by 

 the law-makers ' of this country have no 

 principle : the bird which destroys the 

 noxious insect, and the one which destroys 

 the farmer's grain, are alike protected by 

 the tender-hearted " Society for the preven- 

 tion of cruelty to animals." Why does not 

 this society begin at the beginning ? Why 

 does it not go into the school, where the 

 child's mind is young and pliable, and 

 where it can be moulded into any shape or 

 form, either good or evil. Not long ago it 

 was my painful misfortune to witness a 

 teacher in one of the Huddersfield Board 



