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No. 105.1 
obscurity and becomes wholly forgotten. After a lapse of time, a 
person observes a minute worm in the ears of wheat which he appre¬ 
hends will do mischief. Another sees it, and for a time is persuaded 
that it does his crops no damage whatever. A student has his curi¬ 
osity so far excited that he closely investigates its operations, and 
records the results of his observations, estimating that in one field 
twenty bushels of grain, probably a fifteenth part of the crop, had 
been destroyed. How little is there here to excite alarm. How 
many fortuitous circumstances annually occur which cause us greater 
losses. And now, year after year rolls away, till one generation of 
the human race has nearly passed out of existence, yet nothing, 
nothing further is heard of this matter. That student bids fair to 
sink into the grave, perhaps with the apprehension that posterity 
will pronounce his early labors tinged with the exaggerations of a 
juvenile enthusiasm. But lo, a new epoch unexpectedly opens before 
us. Suddenly bursting from its long obscurity, it rushes forth with 
resistless vigor. It menaces the population of entire districts with 
bankruptcy, and even threatens to wrest from man his “ staff of life.” 
More marvellous still, it overleaps the ocean’s vast expanse, it plants 
itself far in the interior of another continent, and there runs a career 
surpassing in the severity of its havoc all that had been known of it 
in its native haunts. And what is this potent enemy ? A diminutive 
gnat, seemingly too trivial to merit a moment’s notice, too impotent 
to excite an uneasy thought!—a tiny midge, so puny as to flee from 
the light of day, so fragile as to be dismembered by a breath, or 
crushed by the drop of a pin ! Yet man, the vaunted “ lord of cre¬ 
ation” stands dismayed and powerless before it. He sees his pro¬ 
perty wasted to the amount of millions, yet is incapable of resorting 
to any measure to mitigate the severity of its devastations, or of 
erecting the slightest barrier to check it in its triumphant progress! 
We close this account, then, with the hope that what has now 
been written maj be of some avail, not merely in giving the agri¬ 
culturist a more intimate knowledge of one of his greatest enemies, 
but also in enabling the general reader more duly to appreciate the 
vast value of a branch of natural science but slightly esteemed and 
but little pursued in this country. Since there is not one of our cul¬ 
tivated plants, not one of our forest or fruit trees, not one of our 
domesticated animals but is frequently attacked and liable to be de- 
[Senate, No. 105.] 19 
