9 
payment pages of the account books of the landed 
proprietors, the farmers, the foresters, and the 
gardeners throughout the country, and they form a 
total beyond all general supposition in the amount 
of the annual expenditure of the nation (applause). 
—The discussion following the reading of the 
paper was commenced by Mr. W. J. C. Miller, M.A., 
who said he thought they would all agree that they 
had been listening to a perfectly charming address 
on a subject of great interest from a lady who bad 
made that subject peculiarly her own. The study 
of insect life met them at every turn, for insects 
swarmed everywhere, some appearing to be equally 
at home either in the heavens above, the earth 
beneath, or the waters under the earth. They had 
heard of the difficulties they caused among farmers, 
but doubtless many had met with them in more 
confined quarters. He had taken some interest in 
rose growing and the amount of devastation caused 
by the insects was very great. During last season 
—his first year in Richmond —he wondered whether 
Richmond was not the happy breeding ground of 
all these insects. Certainly iu his case alone some 
millions of thtm had been destroyed. A fortnight 
ago they heard something about what was called 
the ethics of a question relating to animal life, and 
he could not help wondering what might be the con¬ 
sequences if in view of the slaughter of insects by 
house-wives, gardeners, and others, some Miss 
Cobbe of the future should come forward as their 
champion, and speak of what might be called the 
ethics of this subject (laughter). Insects preyed 
upon insects, and birds preyed upon these insects, 
and then came man who preyed upon them all, and 
that seemed to illustrate De Morgan’s lines— 
Great fleas have little fleas 
Upon their backs to bite ’em, 
And little fleas have 1 sser fleas, 
And so ad wjbutum. 
In conclusion he expressed the hope thatladiesmight 
be encouraged not only to read papers before the 
Athenaeum, but also to take part in the discussions. 
—Mr. G. Phillips Bevan, J.P., expressed the opinion 
that thegreatestinterest in this subjectshould not be 
in the personal interest they all ought to feel in 
what they met with in their daily walks, but in the 
subject of the national waste of food caused by 
these insects, and Miss Ormerod had done w'ell to 
her country in bringing it forward. Although 
Miss Ormerod bad brought in an exceedingly black 
list of the losses we suffered through iusects, we 
might congratulate ourselves that it was no worse. 
Perhaps the reason was that England contained an 
