144 



INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



Lucanidce, which all prey upon timber. This insect was 

 probably a Phaleria, in which genus the mandibles are pro- 

 truded from the head, like those of Lucanus ; and one species, 

 as we have seen above, feeds upon maize. 



Grreat profits are sometimes derived by farmers from their 

 crops of clover-seed : but this does not happen very often ; for 

 a small weevil (Apion flavifemoraturn), which abounds every 

 where at almost all times of the year, feeds upon the seed of the 

 purple clover, and in most seasons does the crop considerable 

 damage ; so that a plant of the fairest appearance will, in con- 

 sequence of the voracity of this little enemy, produce scarcely 

 any thing. Another species {Apion flavipes) infests the Dutch 

 or white clover.^ The young plants of purple clover, when 

 just sprung, are often, as Mr. Joseph Stickney pointed out to 

 me, much injured by the same little jumping beetles {Haltica) 

 that attack the turnips. In Germany, where Rape is more 

 extensively grown than with us for the seed, the crop some- 

 times wholly fails from the attacks of a small grub, supposed 

 to be that of a weevil of the genera Nedyus or Ceutorhynchus, 

 which, piercing the stalks from the base to the summit, deprives 

 the blossom of the due supply of sap, and thus causes it to 

 perish.^ 



But not only, if let loose to the work of destruction, might 

 insects annihilate our grain and pulse ; they would also deprive 

 the earth of that beautiful green carpet which now covers it, 

 and is so agreeable and so refreshing to the sight. When 

 you see a large tract of land lying fallow, as is sometimes the 

 case in open districts, with no intervening patches of verdure, 

 how unpleasant and uncomfortable is it to your eye ! What 

 then would be your sensations were the whole face of the 

 earth bare, and not dressed by Flora ? But such a state of 

 things would soon take place if, to punish us, or to teach us 

 thankfulness to the great Arbiter of our fate, the insects that 

 feed upon the grass of our pastures were to become as gene- 

 rally numerous as they are occasionally permitted to do. One 

 of the worst of these ravagers is the grub of the common 



1 Markwick, Marsham, and Lehmann, in Linn. Trans, vi. 142 — ; and Kirby 

 in ditto, ix. 37. 42. n. 19. 23. 



2 Keferstein in Silbermann's Revue Ent. i. 135. 



I 



