2io Economic Entomology . [April, 
of noxious inserts would relieve our agriculturists more than 
any of the political movements so generally prescribed in 
modern England as drastic remedies for all the ills a com- 
munity is heir to. 
Let us consider : there are, we may assume, in England 
and Wales, 24 million acres of land in cultivation or laid 
out in pasture and woodlands. What is the average loss 
per acre resulting from the attacks of inserts ? If we look 
at the hop-gardens of Kent, Surrey, Worcestershire, &c., 
we sometimes find the crop reduced by one-half, two-thirds, 
or even totally destroyed, from the ravages of Aphides, the 
so-called red-spider (which, though not stridtly an insedt, 
may rank as such from an economical point of view), the 
hop-bug, and the hop-flea. In orchards and market-gardens 
it is nothing uncommon to find some particular crop, — fruit 
or vegetable,— otherwise promising, fail from the assaults of 
caterpillars, the American blight, scale-insedts, weevils, &c. 
Apples, plums, and cherries are often thus swept away. 
The number of cauliflowers, cabbages, and their congeners 
riddled by the larvse of the “ cabbage whites ” and the cab- 
bage-fly, so as to be utterly unfit for human consumption, is 
often most alarming. As for the ordinary root and cereal 
crops of the farmer, they, too, suffer heavily. But let us 
look rather at pasture-lands, apparently the least liable to 
damage from inserts. We shall often notice the grass and 
clover turning brownish yellow, and dying off in patches, as 
if it had been liberally drenched with boiling water or 
sprinkled with brine. This mischief — which is most com- 
mon in moist, somewhat marshy districts, on heavy clay 
soils, and in reclaimed bog-lands— is due to those most un- 
A6l II,, Scene 2) describes a season identical in its features with “cruel 
'79”:— 
“ Therefore the winds piping to us in vain, 
As in revenge, have sucked up from the sea 
Contagious fogs, which, falling in the land, 
Have every pelting river made so proud 
That they have overborne their continents. 
The ox hath therefore stretched his yoke in vain, 
The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn 
Hath rotted ere its youth attained a beard. 
The fold stands empty in the drowned field, 
And crows are fatted with the murrain flock. 
And thorough this distemperature we see 
The seasons alter, hoary-headed frosts 
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose.” 
Let these lines prove that bad seasons were well known in the Elizabethan 
Age. 
