1 883.] 
and Allies Reconsidered. 
657 
England in almost unexampled numbers ; so that, unless its 
eggs and larvae meet with some destroying agent before the 
spring, there is every reason to fear that the grass and the 
corn must suffer heavily. The slaughter made among this 
enemy by birds, spiders, &c., seemed quite a vanishing quan- 
tity when compared with the millions remaining. 
The house-fly has been in many places less abundant than 
usual. We have even met with persons ill-informed or 
injudicious enough to consider this scarcity an evil omen in 
a sanitary point of view. 
The blowfly appears to have an especial fondness for ivy- 
blossom, — a tendency not easy to understand, since the ivy 
certainly gives off no odour at all similar to that of tainted 
meat. 
Wasps have been locally plentiful, and very destructive 
to fruit. Their nests are now preferably attacked by means 
of petroleum. The exact position is marked in the day- 
time, and after nightfall the nest is drenched with half a 
gallon of petroleum, more or less according to size, and 
ignited either by means of a match or by firing a blank 
cartridge into the mass. This method is far safer and 
more efficient than the old methods of digging out, blowing 
up with gunpowder, &c. We now think that the extirpa- 
tion of wasps may be undertaken with little scruple, since 
the chief service which they render, the destruction of 
blowflies, can be better effected by other methods. In the 
fertilisation of flowers wasps play but a very subordinate 
part. 
Earwigs have been unusually scarce, as far as we have 
been able to observe, and the gooseberry caterpillar and 
moth {Abraxas grossulariata) has in many gardens been 
totally absent. 
Altogether inseCts of all the orders have been exception- 
ally scarce, — a faCt ascribed by some to the extremely damp 
character of the last winter, when many larvae, and espe- 
cially pupae, must have become mouldy. 
On recapitulating the above faCts we cannot help seeing 
that the old absolute distinction made between the 
“ carnivorous ” and “ herbivorous ” animals is, like most 
such dualistic classifications, no longer tenable. With the 
great exception of the ruminant group, whose highly spe- 
cialised digestive organs are adapted to deal with huge 
quantities of a sparingly nutritious matter, the majority of 
mammals are omnivorous, capable of adapting themselves 
either to an animal or a vegetable diet, or to a mixture of 
