104 
NIGGER. 
the middle of July : when this is accomplished it mois- 
tens one end of its cocoon, so as to make it easy to come 
out, and then it climhs up through the earth and takes 
wing. But the plough and harrow, the operations of 
which are sure to follow the eating off of the turnip-crop, 
often turn up and expose the cocoons, so that instead of 
heing an inch or two below the surface they are laid at the 
top. The system of crop rotation, however, serves to re- 
move the fly of the nigger from the food best fitted for its 
progeny, and it often happens that the flies come to matu- 
rity in a field of ripening grain, the ears of which they 
mount, and spreading their wings, float off in myriads to 
the nearest turnip-field. 
I find a hundred recipes for the destruction of these nig- 
gers, all of which are moonshine, except one, and this for 
a wonder is rational. It is this : buy an immense number 
of ducks, and turn them into your turnips, and they will 
devour the niggers by millions, and in a few days become 
as fat as butter. Thus two birds are killed with one stone, 
the ducks fatted and the turnips saved. When we get on 
a little farther with our inquiries into the history of ani- 
mals, especially such little things as insects, you may de- 
pend upon it, we shall find the best way to check the 
increase of any hurtful kind, is to encourage any other ani- 
mal, whether beast, bird, fish or insect, that makes the 
injmious one its prey. You see Providence has foreseen 
that the earth might at any time be desolated, or totally 
unpeopled, by the natural increase of many kinds of ani- 
mals, and He has provided against it. The tiger-moth 
caterpillar nearly every year is produced in these islands 
in sufficient numbers to eat up every green leaf or blade of 
grass; to starve all our sheep, cows and horses; and so to 
