A Treatise on Some of the Insects of New England which are Injurious to Vegetation

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White & Potter, 1852 - 513 pages

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Page 190 - Printing-House, between the hours of ten in the morning and two in the afternoon, to preach eight Divinity Lecture Sermons, the year following, at St.
Page 133 - Sounds do not always give us pleasure according to their sweetness and melody, nor do harsh sounds always displease. We are more apt to be captivated or disgusted with the associations which they promote than with the notes themselves. Thus the shrilling of the field-cricket, though sharp and stridulous, yet marvellously delights some hearers, filling their minds with a train of summer ideas of everything that is rural, verdurous, and joyous.
Page 426 - An old elm-tree in this vicinity used to be a favorite place of resort for the Tremex Columba, or pigeon Tremex; and around it great numbers of the insects were often collected, during the months of July and August, and the early part of September. Six or more females might frequently be seen at once upon it, employed in boring into the trunk and laying their eggs, while swarms of the males hovered around them. For fifteen years or more, some large button-wood trees, in Cambridge, have been visited...
Page 62 - Carolina, about twenty miles from the former place, can have striking and melancholy proofs of this fact. In some places the whole woods, as far as you can see around you, are dead, stripped of the bark, their wintry-looking arms and bare trunks bleaching in the sun, and tumbling in ruins before every blast, presenting a frightful picture of desolation.
Page 180 - It is to be observed, that the spring before this sickness, there was a numerous company of flies, which were like for bigness unto wasps or bumblebees ; they came out of little holes in the ground, and did eat up the green things, and made such a constant yelling noise as made the woods ring of them, and ready to deafen the hearers...
Page 417 - Cambridge, and then made myself acquainted with their transformations. At that time they had not reached Milton, my former place of residence, and have appeared in that place only within two or three years. They now seem to be gradually extending in all directions, and an effectual method for preserving our roses from their attacks has become very desirable to all persons who set any value on this beautiful ornament of our gardens and shrubberies. Showering or syringing the bushes with a liquor,...
Page 92 - ... fragments of wood, to get rid of which the grubs are often obliged to open new holes through the bark. The seat of their operations is known by the oozing of the sap and the dropping of the sawdust from the holes. The bark around the part attacked begins to swell, and in a few years the trunks and limbs will become disfigured and weakened by large porous tumors, caused by the efforts of the trees to repair the injuries they have suffered.
Page 92 - July, soon become pupa?, and are changed to beetles and leave the trees early in September. Thus the existence of this species is limited to one year. White-washing, and covering the trunks of the trees with grafting composition, may prevent the female from depositing her eggs upon them ; but this practice cannot be carried to any great extent in plantations or large nurseries of the trees.
Page 238 - ... brown above, with a broad buff-yellow margin, near the inner edge of which is a row of blue spots. This butterfly first appears in midsummer, and a second brood appears in autumn, and some of the latter may be found either flying or in sheltered places throughout the winter. The caterpillars are spiny, black, minutely dotted with white, with a row of eight dark brick-red spots on the back. The White J-Butterfly, V.
Page 30 - Massachusetts, in New Hampshire, and in Maine. It may, therefore, be well to give a brief description of it. This beetle measures seven-twentieths of an inch in length. Its body is slender, tapers before and behind, and is entirely covered with very short and close ashen-yellow down ; the thorax is long and narrow, angularly widened in the middle of each side, which, suggested the name subspinosa, or somewhat spined ; the legs are slender, and of a pale red color ; the joints of the feet are tipped...

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