Packard.] 
INSECTS OF THE GARDEN. 
3 
caterpillar answering to the description of the army worm 
had been noticed in New England at long intervals since 
1743, its appearance in 1861 took all by surprise, as hosts of 
them appeared full grown and busy at their work, foraging 
upon our wheat and cereals, cutting down field after field of 
grain as they marched their columns in dense black masses 
over stone walls and through fences, often bridging ditches 
filled with tar or burning straw with the dead bodies of their 
companions ; while their ranks were thinned by hosts of do¬ 
mestic fowls and other birds which followed hard upon their 
rear, or disputed their onward march. They had hardly be¬ 
gun their work in New York, when their appearance was 
heralded in the vicinity of Boston. But a few days elapsed, 
and their simultaneous appearance in Bangor, at the Forks 
of the Kennebec and the limits of civilization on the Penob¬ 
scot River was announced in the papers, and the cry of their 
coming was caught up on the river St. John. Millions of 
dollars worth of grain were lost to the country by the rav¬ 
ages of this one species of caterpillar. 
The same season the appearance of the grain aphis in 
hosts which blackened the tops of waving grain ripening for 
the harvest, was no less marvellous, as the insect had been 
comparatively unknown before. The range of the grain 
aphis was still greater than that of the army worm. Though 
hundreds of plant lice pitted against one army worm might 
produce less visible effects, yet the continual depletion by 
these pygmies in drawing out the sap of the grain stalk must 
have told upon the quality of the grain and of the seed for 
several years succeeding. 
The strange history of the locust, its wide spread migra¬ 
tions, its sudden appearance and departure, the mysteries 
of its birthplace, the ruin consequent on its devastations, 
are familiar to every reader of the Bible, and are repeated 
in ancient and modern accounts of oriental travel. These 
scourges of mankind, these insect Vandals and Goths have 
3 
