831 
No. 145.1 
leaf, whilst the Lady birds or Coccinellida with, their larvse and 
Aphis-lions and other destroyers were equally numerous. All 
fears as to the result were consequently allay*d. Still I little an¬ 
ticipated such a rapid and utter extermination of these vermin as 
actually occurred. A week afterwards upon a careful examina¬ 
tion not a living aphis could be found upon the leaves of any of 
the trees, and the conquerors had already disbanded their forces 
and had nearly all retired. The empty skins of the slain, adher¬ 
ing to the leaves, with the swollen bodies of others which had 
been punctured by parasites—for these too it appeared had 
stepped in to give their progeny a share in the feast—were the 
only relics of the teeming myriads which had so recently swarmed 
there. It is by looking at the works of Nature in a definite man- ; 
n?r and tracing out her operations specifically and in their minute 
details that we arrive at some faint conceptions of their magnitude 
and grandeur, and become vividly impressed with the truth that 
no other agency than that of a Creator infinite in wisdom and 
power could have peopled the world which we inhabit with such 
countless numbers and such an endless variety ot objects animate 
and inanimate, each occupying its appropriate sphere, and all so 
arranged as to fulfil the objects for which they were called into 
existence. Has the reader as he has passed a forest ever at¬ 
tempted to conjecture the number of trees which it contained'? 
and has his mind passed onwards to a surmise of the probable 
number of leaves growing upon each tree, and onwards still to 
the number of insects which may be drawing their sustenance 
from each one of these leaves, and still further to the number of 
minute and infinitesimal parasites which may be subsisting upon 
each of these insects'? Among the cherry trees alluded to above, 
was a row of seven young ones which had attained a height ot about 
ten feet. By counting the number of leaves upon some of the limbs 
and the number of limbs upon the tree, I find a small cherry tree 
of the size above stated is clothed with about seventeen thousand 
leaves. And at the time alluded to these leaves could not have 
averaged less than five or six hundred lice upon each, and there 
was fully a third more occupying the stems and the tips of the 
twigs. Each of these small trees was therefore stocked with at 
least twelvemillions of these creatures. And yet so vigilant, so 
