), .^1, -dst* C i J-t "“i 
ADDRESS, ON OUR MOST PERNICIOUS INSECTS, 
DELIVERED AT THE ANNUAL MEETING, FEBRUARY, 1859. 
By Asa Fi-rcn, M. D., Entomologist of the Society. 
[Note. —The Society has done me the compliment, each year, of requesting for'insertion 
in its Transactions, a copy of the Lectures I have delivered at its annual meetings since I was 
honored with the appointment of its entomologist. But ns everything of value in those Lec¬ 
tures has usually been embodied in a more full and definite form in my annual reports, I 
could Dot regard it as cither necessary or judicious to thus encumber the Society's volumes 
with repetitions of the same observations. As the following Lecture, however, in addition 
to some general views of the subject, contains a succinct statement of the habits of several 
of our most pernicious insects, with reference to specimens which are permanently remaining 
open to public view in the Society’s Museum, it perhaps possesses sufficient value to entitle 
it to the publicity here given it.] 
Mr. President and Gentlemen—It was long ago remarked, and the saying 
has often been repeated, that “America is the land of insects." It is not 
difficult to perceive what has given rise and currency to this sentiment. 
When this branch of science was in its infancy, Linnaeus, the great legisla¬ 
tor of Natural History, gave to one of the large, beautiful moths, common 
in the United States, a name, indicating it to be the head, the king, of the 
whole insect race. Eighty and a hundred years ago, the specimens of 
insects which were gathered in this country and taken to Europe, show r ed 
to the men of science there, so many singularly formed objects of this class, 
widely differing from anything which had been discovered in the old world, 
that it naturally impressed them with the idea that this quarter of the 
globe was peculiarly rich in curiosities of this kind. And about the same 
period, the sweeping havoc in our wheat crops, which was made by the 
Hessian fly, was a phenomenon unparalleled in the whole history of wheat 
culture from the early ages of the world down to that time. That a minute 
insect, nestling in the root aud stalk of the growing wheat, should be so 
excessively numerous as to find every blade in the field, and totally destroy 
this crop over a wide extent of country, excited the astonishment and also 
the alarm of the whole civilized world. And from an occurrence so novel 
and so remarkable, it might well be inferred that there must be something 
in the climate, or some other physical peculiarity of this country, eminently 
favorable to insect life, to cause these creatures to become thus excessively 
multiplied. 
And that America is the land of insects—that we are here sustaining 
greater losses from this class of objects than are experienced in correspond¬ 
ing parts of the old world—and that we shall be obliged to study their 
habits in order to successfully combat them and prevent their ravages, 
before our soil can possibly sustain so dense a population as exists there, 
scarcely admits of a doubt. 
In the researches in which I am occupied, I have constant occasion to 
examine the statements which European writers give of their injurious 
insects, and the depredations which they commit, in order to compare them 
with our insects here. I thus come to know it as a fact, that the losses 
