OF INSECTS IN GENERAI.. 
313 
j]ie country like an army, deftroy every green Oirub and 
pile of grafs ; and their devaluation has not ceafed, when 
they are fucceeded by other fwarms, that prefs upon their 
rear, devouring the tender branches and ftalks of plants, 
which their forerunners had left. This dreadful vilita- 
tion, which the language of Scripture has juftly defcribed 
as a plague, does not terminate till the infects have paf- 
fed into their winged Hate, when they fly off, leaving the 
whole furface of the earth naked and brown, as if torch- 
ed by fire. 
Little inferior to the loculi in its deftructive powers is 
the Phalicna Graminis of Linmcus, which deltroys the 
meadows in Sweden : There the peafants are employed 
in cutting deep ditches in the furface to flop the progrefs 
of the larvce as they pafs along : If the fwarrn be fmall, 
this device has the defired effect; but the numbeis of 
thefe animals are often fo great, that they fill up the 
trenches, and pafs along over the dead bodies that are bu- 
ried in them. The formica facciiilifera is a native of the 
IVeJi Indies, where it pervades the plantations of the fu- 
gar-cane, entering the plants, and deftroying them when 
they are tender : Alter long experience of its depreda-’ 
tions, the inhabitants have never been able to invent a 
method of deftroying this pernicious animal. In our own 
country, the turnip -fly, the butterfly, and the goofeber- 
ry worm, have long committed depredations in the fields 
and gardens, which no invention has hitnertobeen able to 1 
prevent : Againft the laft of thele animals, indeed, the 
watering the bulhes with an infufion of tobacco, has been 
found efficacious, by killing the greater number in their 
larva ftate. 
Voti III. R r 
Another 
