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No. 151.] 
“ canker-worm at least, said he, it is the very same worm 
which was called the canker-worm in Connecticut, when I was a 
boy. Had my good friend asseverated that the moon was made o t 
greeh- cheese, he would scarcely have surprised me more. I over¬ 
heard another gentleman, a graduate of one of our best colleges, 
recommending to another similarly educated citizen, to bore his 
apple trees, fill the hole with sulphur, and close it by inserting a 
plug “made from the wood of the same tree.” Methought he 
ought to have added, that the hole should be made with “ a sil¬ 
ver bullet,” or at least that this operation should be done “ in the 
old o’ the moon.” 
Friend Johnson, posterity will only need what I have above 
stated, to show them that mauger all our vaunted light and intel¬ 
ligence, in this, one of the most important branches of natural 
science to the farmer, and one of the most interesting departments 
of nature’s works to every studious and inquiring, mind, our 
country, at the present day, is sunk in Egyptian darkness. In 
diffusive information, so far as respects Entomology, we are lag¬ 
ging far behind the subjects of several of the monarchical and 
despotic governments of the old world. In Germany and Prus¬ 
sia, countries which are regarded as much less enlightened than 
our own, not merely is a professor of this science deemed indis- 
pensible in every university, and every agricultural seminarj r , 
but its rudiments are taught in all their primary schools. In this 
country, on the other hand, such a thing as a course of lectures 
upon this science, has never yet been delivered, except perhaps 
in one or two of our universities. Indeed much of the very 
foundation of this science, upon this side of the Atlantic, is yet to 
be laid. Whole groups and families of our insects have never 
yet been examined. We have not even names by which to desig¬ 
nate a considerable portion of our species. Take this apple tree 
worm, for instance. It belongs to a family of insects, of which, 
in Great Britain, there are upwards of 300 species. Our own 
country, we may safely assume, contains at least double this num¬ 
ber. And of our 600 American insects of this family, how many, 
think you, have been examined and described! So far as I am 
able to ascertain, there are three species only ! In juo other de- 
