Weevils when in the egg, or not come to their perfect state, are often devoured by mites.

The Wolf is a little white worm or maggot that infects granaries or corn chambers, and often does unspeakable damage.

I call it a worm or maggot because under that form it does the mischief; though in its perfect state, it is really a small moth, whose wings are white, spotted with black.

This little maggot has six legs, and as it creeps along there issues from its mouth an exceeding fine thread or web, by which it fastens itself to every thing it touches, so that it cannot fall. Its mouth is armed with a pair of redish forceps, or biting instruments, with which it gnaws its way, not only into wheat or other grain, but perforates even wooden beams, boxes, books, and almost any thing it meets with.

Towards the end of summer, this pernicious insect (in corn chambers infested with them) may be seen crawling up the walls in

great numbers, in search of proper places, where they may abide in safety during their continuance in their aurelia state: for, when the time of undergoing a change into that state approaches, they forsake their food, and the little cells they had formed of hollowed grains of corn, clotted together, by means of the web coming from their mouths, and wander about till they find some wooden beam, or other body to their mind, into which they gnaw holes with their sharp fangs, capable of concealing them: and there enveloping themselves in a covering of their own spinning, soon become metamorphosed into dark coloured aurelias.

These aurelias continue all the winter inactive and harmless ; but about April or May, as the weather grows warm, they are transformed anew, and come forth moths of the

kind above described. They may then be seen in great numbers, taking little flights, or creeping along the walls; and as they eat nothing in their fly state, are at that time not

mischievous. But they soon couple and lay eggs, shaped like hen's eggs, but not larger than a grain of sand, each female sixty or seventy, which by means of a tube at the end of her tail, she thrusts or insinuates into the little wrinkles, hollows, or crevices of the corn; where, in about sixteen days, they hatch, and then the plague begins; for, the minute worms or maggots immediately perforate the grain they were hatched upon, eat out the very heart of it, and with their webs cement other grains thereto, which they likewise scoop out and devour, leaving nothing but husks and dust, and such a quantity of their dung, as shews them to be more voracious insects than the weevil.

The watchful observer has two opportunities of destroying these vermin, if they happen to be among his corn; one is, when they forsake their food and ascend the walls, which they will sometimes almost cover: the other, when they appear in the moth state: at both these times they may be crushed to

death against the walls, by clapping sacks upon them. But they may be exterminated still more effectually, if, closing up all the doors and windows, the corn chamber be filled with the fumes of brimstone, by leaving it burning on a pan of charcoal, without givng it any vent for twenty-four hours. Great caution, however, must be used, to open the windows and doors, and let all the fumes be entirely gone, before any body enters the place afterwards, for fear of suffocation. The fumes of the sulphur are in no wise hurtful to the corn.

The eyes of insects are amazing pieces of mechanism, whose structure and disposition, without the assistance of the microscope, would for ever have been unknown to

man.

Beetles, Dragon-flies, Bees, Wasps, Ants, common flies, butterflies, and many other insects have two crescents, or immoveable caps, composing the greatest part of the head, and containing a prodigious number

of little hemispheres, or round protuberances, placed with the utmost regularity and exactness in lines crossing each other, and resembling lattice work. These are a collection of eyes, so perfectly smooth and polished, that like só many mirrors they reflect the images of all outward objects. One may see the figure of a candle multiplied apparently to an indefinite number on their surfaces, shifting its beams into each eye, according to the motion given it, or the particular position of the observers hands ; and as other creatures are obliged to turn their eyes to objects, this sort have some or other of their eyes always ready directed towards any objects which present themselves on any side. In short, all these little hemispheres are real eyes, having in the middle of eacha minute lens and pupil, through which objects appear inverted, or topsy-turvy, as through a convex glass this becomes also a small telescope, when there is a just focal distance between it and the lens of the microscopes