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or to overcome them by the encouragement of their natural 
enemies. 
To effect any one of these purposes efficiently, we should first 
make ourselves acquainted with our liliputian enemies in their 
various characters, and then, if we cannot conquer them in one 
shape, we possibly may in another. The insect kingdom come 
forth as performers in one general pantomime. They are 
sometimes ugly and crawling; sometimes gay and flying, or 
bounding from place to place with the utmost alacrity; even 
the troublesome little animal with whose popular appellation 
we commenced, although it be a mere crawling, twisting, hairy, 
thread-like, voracious pest to the farmer, gardener, and florist, 
it ultimately assumes the more important character of a grave- 
looking, abstemious, sombre beetle, having fresh parts to per- 
form ; consisting of running, flying, tumbling, pretending to be 
dead, and then jumping, like a clown in a pantomime off its 
back, and alighting on its feet. The fact is, — a fact which may 
surprise some of our readers, the common Wireworm becomes, 
in its perfect state, a well-known brown beetle, which is some- 
times, from its antics to which we have alluded, called Skip- 
jack ; and from a snapping noise which it produces by a little 
apparatus when it leaps, it is sometimes also called Click-beetle. 
Mr. John Curtis, the author of British Entomology — a work 
of great labour and talent ; and as regards its plates, w hich are 
also executed by Mr. Curtis, unrivalled at the present day, 
(these could be produced only by the hand of him who united 
the character of naturalist and artist) this gentleman has writ- 
ten a memoir on Wireworms, in the Journal of the Royal 
Agricultural Society; and as that work will not meet the eye 
of the generality of our readers, we will extract from it a few of 
the leading particulars. 
“Of all the insect enemies with which the farmer has to con- 
tend, there are none which are more fatal in their effects, and 
more difficult to overcome, than the Wireworms. The larvae 
of many insects are not unfrequently attached to one species of 
plants, or at least to one particular tribe or 'natural order;’ 
thus the ravages of the Turnip-fly are confined to the Cruciferae, 
of the Black-caterpillar to the turnip, of the Hessian-fly to 
corn, &c.; but in the Wireworm we have an example of a larva 
which may almost be termed omnivorous, as far as regards the 
