STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
597 
authors as subsisting upon it.* But in this country I cannot find a single 
insect or worm feeding upon this plant. Seldom even can a grasshopper, 
an insect which devours all kind of vegetation indiscriminately, be started 
up in the midst of a patch of these weeds, although they may be plentiful 
upon the surrounding herbage. And I am firmly persuaded that this weed 
thrives and usurps the place which it does, because it here grows without 
let or hindrance from any insect destroyers ; and that this evil will con¬ 
tinue, until by accident, or by the hand of man, some of the insects which 
prey upon this plant in Europe, are introduced upon this side of the Atlantic. 
And we can now sec why it is that insects become such pests to the agri¬ 
culturalist and the fruit grower. It is their office to preserve a due balance 
in the vegetable world, and to check every tree and plant from extending 
itself and usurping a place which does not belong to it. Now it is the 
very aim of man to destroy this balance. It is the object of all his labors 
and toils. He sweeps away the forest trees which nature planted upon his 
lands; he exterminates the wild grasses and weeds which nature causes to 
spring up; he sows his grounds to wheat; it is his object to make this one 
plant occupy the land, to the complete exclusion of the hundred other 
plants which nature designed should diversify the same spot. Nature, as 
it were, resents this violence done to her arrangements, and seeks to re¬ 
store the equilibrium and preserve the harmony which her laws require. 
And thus it happens that those insects which live upon wheat, whose office 
it is to check this plant from becoming too extended and occupying a 
greater portion of the earth’s surface than belongs to it in the economy of 
nature —these insects attack and destroy this crop. It is nature’s appointed 
way for preserving the balance in her domain, and preventing one of her 
subjects from overpowering others and crowding them out of existence. In 
one word, it is an instance of that 
4t partial evil, universal good,” 
of which the poet sings. 
And hence we see that the farmer’s vocation requires something more 
than the plowing of his fields and sowing his seed. As he interferes with 
the arrangements of nature in doing this, nature will revenge herself, by 
sending her insects into his fields to destroy what he has sowed. He must 
learn to combat these or he will be subjected to most serious and vexatious 
losses. To render his pursuit successful, therefore, it is indispensable that 
he be acquainted with the different insects which prey upon the crops which 
he cultivates. He requires, as a first stop, to know their looks, in order 
that he may recognize any one of them, that makes its appearance in his 
fields. And he requires to be acquainted with their history and habits, 
that he may be able to adopt suitable measures for frustrating their opera¬ 
tions, and preventing the losses which, if unchecked, they are liable to 
occasion. 
Many persons, on contemplating the myriads of these creatures with 
which our country and world is inhabited, in connection with their usual 
extreme minuteness, the obscure situations in which a large portion of them 
