INSECTS. 463 
Persons travelling on the roads, or who were abroad in 
the fields, found it difficult to make their way home, as 
the insects were continually beating against their faces, 
and occasioned great pain. In a very short time the leaves 
of all the trees, for several miles round, were destroyed, 
leaving the whole country, though it was near midsum- 
mer, as naked and desolate as it would have been in the 
middle of winter. The noise which these enormous swarms 
made, in seizing and devouring the leaves, was so loud as to 
have been compared to the distant sawing of timber. 
Swine and poultry destroyed them in vast numbers ; wait- 
ing under the trees for the clusters of insects to drop, and 
then devouring such swarms as to become fat upon them^ 
alone. Even the native Irish, from the insects having 
eaten up the whole produce of the ground, adopted a mode 
of cooking them, and thus used them as food. Towards 
the end of the summer, they disappeared so suddenly, that 
in a few days there was not one left. 
Rooks are very fond of eating these grubs, and often, 
when they are seen in a newly-sown n'eld, apparently de- 
vouring the grain, they are in fact rendering the greatest 
service to the farmer, by destroying his great enemy, the 
white worm. 
THE DOR, OR BLIND BEETLE. 
(Geotrupes stercorarius.) 
THIS well-known insect, which is sometimes also called 
" the shard borne beetle," has been often noticed by the 
poets. Amongst others, Shakespeare makes Macbeth 
say, 
Ere to black Hecate's summons 
The shard borne beetle, with his drowsy hum 
Hath rung night's yawning peel, there shall be done 
A deed of dreadful note. 
