THE EARTH-WORM. 233 to us gardeners, and occasion the loss of more young plants than even the slug, by drawing in the leaf, which throws out the root; so that in the morning we find our nursling inverted. It is the same propensity, or ordination, for removing decayed matters, that influences them in these actions; as they are the faded leaves that are seized by them, such as newly removed plants present before the root draws nutriment from the earth. Even stones of some magnitude are at times drawn over their holes. The horticulturist perhaps encounters more mortification and disappointment than any other laborer upon the earth from insects, elementary severity, the slug, and the worm; yet, if the depredations of this last creature do at times excite a little of our irascibility, we must still remember the nightly labors, and extensive services, that are performed for the agriculturist by this scavenger of the earth, and manurer of the soil. Besides, worms are essentially useful in draining our lands from superfluous moisture, which in many cases, without their agency, would be detained upon or near the surface of the earth, chilling and deteriorating our pastures. A few inches of soil, resting upon a substratum of clay, would commonly, without some natural or artificial drainage, be soaked with water after heavy rains, and thus become a bog, or produce coarse water herbage rather than good grasses; but these worms greatly facilitate the passage of the water by draining horizontally along the bed of clay, and aid the emission of the water by this means, as I have often observed in the trenches, which we cut in our retentive soils, numerous worm-casts on their sides a few days after they had been made, being the exits of the horizontal runs, and through these the water drains into the trenches, and runs off. I do not assert the water would not in any case be discharged without the agency of worms; but that the passages which they make expedite it, which, in situations where the operation would be subjected to delay from the position of the ground, or the under stratum, is of infinite advantage. Thus the soil is not only rendered firm, allowing the admission of 234 INATTENTION TO PROVIDENCE. cattle, but the good herbage, which the long residence of water would vitiate or destroy, is saved from injury, and the aquatic and useless plants starved or checked in their growth; but after great gluts of rain, when the supply of water is greater than can be speedily carried off, it becomes stagnant, and those worms, which cannot burrow beyond its influence, soon perish, and we lose the benefit of these very beneficial creatures. Drainage is therefore one of the most important operations in our agricultural concerns. As by irrigation we turn a quantity of nutritive water over our lands, or by reason of its higher temperature foster the growth of grasses; so, by draining cold and superfluous moisture off, we promote the growth of valuable vegetation. I would advocate the cause of all creatures, had I the privilege of knowing the excellency of them; not willingly assigning vague and fanciful claims to excite wonder, or manifest a base pride by any vaunt of superior observation; but when we see, blind as we are, that all things are formed in justice, mercy, truth, I would tell my tale as a man, glorying as a Christian, and bless the gracious. power that permitted me to obtain this knowledge. Residing, as I constantly do, in the country, and having been long observant of rural things, and the operations of Infinite Wisdom, through the very feeble organs with which I have been endowed, I have often thought, that we, who, are daily made sensible of so many manifestations of creative power and mercy, should be more seriously disposed, more grateful for the beneficences of Providence, than those who live in societies removed from these evidences; but yet I neither know nor believe that we in any respect give greater proof of this disposition, or are more sensible of the benevolence of an overruling power, than others. The manufacturer by the combination of artful contrivances effects his purposes, and by aid of man's wisdom brings his work to perfection; the artisan may eat his bread with all thankfulness and humility of heart, solace his labors and mitigate his fatigue by the grateful flavor and juices of fruits purchased at the stall; but he sees nothing of the machinery, the gradual elaborations of INATTENTION TO PROVIDENCE. 235 nature, nor can he be conversant with the multiplicity of influences and events, which are requisite to bring them to his hand. He who lives in the country knows that an omnipotent impulse must be constantly in action; he may till his land, and scatter his corn, but the early and latter rain must soften his furrows; the snow, as wool, must cover the soil; the hoar-frost, like ashes, lighten his glebe; the sunshine animate the sprouting shoot; and winds evaporate noxious moisture; insects and blights, that hover around, or circulate through the air, must be guided away, or our labors become abortive, or are consumed: we see the bud, the blossom, leaf, and germ, all progressively advance, to afford plenty or yield us enjoyment; we see these things accomplished by the influencing interpositions of a beneficent Providence, and in no way effected by the machinery or artifices of our own hands; and it should operate more powerfully, in disposing those who witness them to particular resignation and gratitude, than others who cannot behold them, but view the ingenuity of man as the agent and means of his prosperity; yet how it happens that this principle is not in more active operation within us, I cannot perceive. Every age has been the dupe of empiricism; and the greater its darkness, the more impudent appear to have been the pretensions of knavery. We may even now, perhaps, swallow a few matters, the arcana of the needy or the daring, in the various compositions of powders, draughts and pills, which are not quite agreeable to our palates or our stomachs; but our forefathers had more to encounter, as they had more faith to support them, when they were subjected, for the cure of their maladies, to such medicines as album græcum, or the white bony excrement of dogs, bleached on the bank, for their heart-burns and acidities; the powder produced from burnt mice, as a dentifrice; millepedes, or woodlice, for nephritic and other complaints; and the ashes of earth-worms, administered in nervous and epileptic cases. Our apple-trees here are greatly injured, and some annually destroyed by the agency of what seems to be a very feeble insect. We call it, from habit, or from some unassigned cause, the "American blight" (aphis lanata); this noxious creature being known in some orchards by the more significant name of "white blight.” In the spring of the year a slight hoariness is observed upon the branches of certain species of our orchard fruit. As the season advances this hoariness increases, it becomes cottony, and toward the middle or the end of summer the under sides of some of the branches are invested with a thick, downy substance, so long as at times to be sensibly agitated by the air. Upon examining this substance we find, that it conceals a multitude of small wingless creatures, which are busily employed in preying upon the limb of the tree beneath. This they are well enabled to do, by means of a beak terminating in a fine bristle: this, being insinuated through the bark, and the sappy part of the wood, enables the creature to extract, as with a syringe, the sweet, vital liquor that circulates in the plant. This terminating bristle is not observed in every individual: in those that possess it, it is of different lengths, and is usually, when not in use, so closely concealed under the breast of the animal, as to be invisible. In the younger insects it is often manifested by protruding like a fine termination to the anus; but as their bodies become lengthened the bristle is not in this way observable. The alburnum, or sap wood, being thus wounded, rises up in excrescences and nodes all over the branch, and deforms it; the limb, deprived of its nutriment, grows sickly; the leaves turn yellow, and the part perishes. Branch after branch is thus assailed until they all become leafless, and the tree dies. Aphides in general attack the young and softer parts of plants; but this insect seems easily to wound the harder bark of the apple, and by no means makes choice of the most tender part of the branch. They give a preference to certain sorts, but not always the most rich fruits; as cider apples, and wildings, are greatly infested by them, and from some unknown cause other varieties seem to be exempted from their depredations. The Wheeler's russet, and Crofton pippin, I have never ob served to be injured by them. This insect is viviparous, or produces its young alive, forming a cradle for them by discharging from the extremities of its body a quantity of long cottony matter, which, becoming interwoven and entangled, prevents the young from falling to the earth, and completely envelops the parent and offspring. In this cottony substance we observe, as soon as the creature becomes animated in the spring, and as long as it remains in vigor, many round pellucid bodies, which, at the first sight, look like eggs, only that they are larger than we might suppose to be ejected by the animal. They consist of a sweet glutinous fluid, and are probably the discharges of the aphis, and the first food of its young. That it is thus consumed, I conjecture from its diminution, and its by no means increasing so fast as fæcal matter would do from such perpetually feeding creatures. I have not, in any instance, observed the young to proceed from these globular bodies, though they are found at various ages at all times during the season. This languinous vestiture seems to serve likewise as a vehicle for dispersing the animal; for though most of our species of aphis are furnished with wings, I have never seen any individual of this American blight so provided, but the winds wafting about small tufts of this downy matter, convey the creature with it from tree to tree throughout the whole orchard. In the autumn, when this substance is generally long, the winds and rains of the season effectually disperse these insects, and we observe them endeavoring to secrete themselves in the crannies of any neighboring substance. Should the savoy cabbage be near the trees whence they have been dislodged, the cavities of the under sides of its leaves are commonly favorite asylums for them. Multitudes perish by these rough removals, but numbers yet remain; and we may find them in the nodes and crevices, on the under sides of the branches, at any period of the year, the long, cottony vesture being removed, but still they are enveloped in a fine, short, downy clothing, to be seen by a magnifier, proceeding apparently from every suture, or pore of their bodies, and protecting them in their |