A female Blight, as one creature is termed—a very destructive aphis—which was shut up for observation by another naturalist, brought forth ninety-five little ones in less than three weeks, and she can repeat this as often as twenty times during one summer if the weather be favourable to her. The calculations which have been made by such scientists as Professor Huxley prove that, were it not for our allies and friends, our unpaid and often ill-appreciated bird labourers, “there would be room in the world for nothing else” but those tiny creatures the aphides! Mole crickets in the south of France and in Germany do great harm to the pea and bean crops. They have been known to destroy one-sixth, and even one-fourth, of a crop of young corn by eating off the roots. Barley and potatoes also they do a vast amount of harm to. The mole devours this insect, as it does many underground enemies of the agriculturist, and yet mole-catchers still receive so much an acre, year by year, from landholders for destroying the mole, whose heaps help to fertilise the soil, even if they do make it uneven, and if not levelled they injure the mowing machines; but their services are worth the extra labour in levelling. Winged beetles swarm in the end of May, and they attack beans, broad and other beans. Horses fed on Sicilian beans are often injured in their health by the numbers of these creatures that have been contained in their food. One farmer in England wrote that he calculated he had as many of these small hurtful beetles as he had beans. Another farmer complained that he lost two whole sowings of turnips owing to the ravages of earwigs, and a writer in the _Field_ states that he had one September to cover his windows with muslin and to shut all his doors at sunset because of the army of earwigs that invaded his precincts. “They dropped,” he says, “on the supper-table, they swarmed in the pantry, getting into fruit pies after cooking, and running out when the pies were cut. They pushed their way into the bread, so that we frequently cut slices of these wretches in cutting bread and butter. They found their way into the beds, linings of hats, coats, etc. When the doors were opened in the morning they dropped in such numbers that the mats were literally covered with them,” etc., etc.