INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 159 



were particularly felt in the kitchen-gardens, where they 

 devoured every thing, whether pulse or pot-herbs, so that 

 nothing was left besides the stalks and veins of the leaves. 

 The credulous multitude thought they were poisonous, report 

 affirming that in some instances the eating of them had been 

 followed by baneful effects. In consequence of this alarming 

 idea, herbs were banished for several weeks from the soups of 

 Paris. Fortunately these destroyers did not meddle with 

 the corn, or famine would have followed in their train. 

 Reaumur has proved that a single pair of these insects might 

 in one season produce 80,000 ; so that were the friendly 

 Ichneumons removed, to which the mercy of Heaven has 

 given it in charge to keep their numbers Avithin due limits, 

 we should no longer enjoy the comfort of vegetables with our 

 animal food, and probably soon become the prey of scorbutic 

 diseases.^ — I must not overlook that singular animal the 

 mole-cricket {Gryllotalpa vulgaris), which is a terrible de- 

 vastator of the produce of the kitchen-garden. It burrows 

 under ground, and devouring the roots of plants thus oc- 

 casions 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 produce 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. Tinea ( Ornix) rodopha- 

 gella KoUar, Tortrix (^Argyrotoza) Bergmanniana ^, and of 

 several other moths, and often loses all its loveliness and 

 lustre from 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 



1 Reaum. ii. 337. 



2 Westwood in Loudon's Gard. Mag. Sept. 1837. 



3 A-pis. **, c. 2. a. K. 



