bers, marching from west to east; walls and fences did not impede its progress, but the army was stopt by plowing trenches before it; the small particles of earth yielding to their feet as they attempted to climb the side. The multitudes which died in these trenches infected the air, and were believed in many places to produce a dangerous fever. The Hessian fly is supposed to have been an importation, because it first appeared in a field of wheat on or near the Hessian encampment opposite New York. We know not whether the Germans recognize it as one of the plagues of their country, or if it be the resurrection of some buried species which has in evil hour found its way to the light. It travels at the rate of twenty miles a year, and it has been so destructive that the cultivation of wheat in Connecticut has been in a great measure discontinued, in consequence of its ravages. It has indeed been found impossible longer to cultivate the particular sort of wheat which was best fitted for the soil and climate of New England, and furnished also the best bread. This species is actually lost out of the country,' and whenever wheat is sown, the fly multiplies with it, till, in a few years, it becomes numerous enough to destroy the crop. Nothing,' says the author, who has the merit of looking at all things religiously,' nothing can more strongly exhibit the dependence, or the littleness of man,nor any thing more forcibly display the ease with which his Maker punishes his transgressions. The canker-worm, the caterpillar, the palmer-worm, and the locust-these and their compeers have in every age been the army of God, which has humbled the pride, frustrated the designs, and annihilated the hopes of man. The Hessian fly is less than a gnat, and when settled in its usual manner on the ground is commonly invisible, being seen only as it rises in small clouds immediately before your steps. It is feeble and helpless also in the extreme: defenceless against the least enemy, and crushed by the most delicate touch. Yet for many years it has taxed this country annually more perhaps than a million of dollars.' - Josselyn observes that the pease in America were the best in the world, and that during his eight years' residence he never saw, or heard of one that was worm eaten. The Bruchus pisi, or pease beetle, however, has since his time conquered the country. It was first noticed in Pennsylvania. The Swedes, who were the original colonists there, had every man his field of pease the culture became hopeless after the legislature offered rewards for destroying the purple daw, as a maize thief; and it was discovered, when too late, that this bird had kept down the numbers of an insect far more injurious than itself. Kalm, the Linnæan traveller, had very nearly introduced them into Sweden. A 4 Sweden. He took home with him some sweet pease, which were fresh and green when he packed them in America; but on opening them at Stockholm, he found them all hollow, and the head of an insect peeping out of each: some of the beetles even crept out, but he hastily shut the packet. I own,' says he,' that when I first perceived them, I was more frightened than I should have been at the sight of a viper; for I had at once a full view of the whole damage which my dear country would have suffered, if only two or three of these noxious insects had escaped. The posterity of many families, and even the inhabitants of whole provinces, would have had sufficient reason to detest me as the cause of so great a calamity.'-It appears, however, from Linnæus that the creature has been imported into the south of Europe. A great interchange of incommodities is unwittingly carried on wherever commerce extends. The West Indian cockroach has found its way to the foot of Skiddaw; and we have seen the huge nest of the American wasp suspended from trees in Cumberland. Josselyn, in his first visit to New England, took one of these nests for a fruit, supposing it to be a pine-apple plated with scales. 'It was as big,' he says, as the crown of a woman's hat. I made bold to step unto it with an intent to have gathered it; no sooner had I toucht it but hundreds of wasps were about me.' The same old author gives a catalogue of such plants as had in his time sprung up since the English planted and kept cattle in New England. They were two-and-twenty in number. The common nettle was the first which the settlers noticed; and the plantain was called by the Indians, English man's foot, as if it sprung from their footsteps. The insect which destroys the apple trees comes to us from America, and is now travelling toward the interior of England as steadily, though not so fast, as the Hessian fly. Another destructive insect has within a few years attacked the fruit trees in New England, more especially the Morello eherry, which it has nearly exterminated; and the plum. Insects of this kind are not observed till their ravages excite attention, They then emerge into notice like the hordes of barbarians at the breaking up of the Roman empire, Goths, Vandals, Alans, Heruls, Huns, Bulgarians, &c. none of which were heard of till they became numerous enough to be the terror and the scourge of the civilized world. If the statements may be relied on that there is in one part of Louisiana a fly the sting of which is fatal to horses, and in Persia a bug whose bite is death to the traveller, it would seem that man has far more formidable enemies in the insect creation than he has ever yet contended with. It is however apparently so inconsistent with what we know of the order of creation, that such powers of destruction should be vested in creatures against which no protection can be found either in courage or in foresight, that we must look for further testimony before we can implicitly give credit to it. Were the common fly armed with a mortal sting, neither fire nor flood would be needed to exterminate the human race. Dr. Dwight has a theory that the diseases which are commonly imputed to stagnant waters and marsh miasmata, are produced by animalcular putrefaction. The reasons which he assigns are given in his own words, because they may fitly be made the subject of experiment. 'A number of years since, I put a quantity of ground pepper into a tumbler of water; and a few days afterwards, found a thin scum spread over the surface. Within a few days more, I perceived, on examining this scum with a microscope, that it exhibited an immense number of living animalcules. Two or three days after, examining the same scum again, I found not the least appearance of life. After another short period, the scum was replenished with living beings again; and, after another, became totally destitute of them. This alternate process continued until the water became so fœtid as to forbid a further examination. The conclusion which I drew from these facts was, that the first race of animalcules, having laid their eggs, died, and were succeeded in a short time by a second, and these by a third. The fœtor, which arose from the putrefaction of these ephemeral beings, differed in one respect from that which is produced by the decay of larger animals. Although it was perceptible at a small distance only, and perhaps less loathsome than the smell of a corrupted carcass, it was far more suffocating. When the effluvia were received into the lungs, it seemed as if nature gave way, and was preparing to sink under the impression. A pungency, entirely peculiar, accompanied the smell, and appeared to lessen the vis vitæ in a manner different from any thing which I had ever experienced before. The scum, which covered this pepper-water, was in appearance the same with that which in hot seasons is sometimes seen on standing waters, and abounds on those marshes exposed to the sun. To the production, and still more to the sustenance of the animalcules, vegetable putrefaction seems to be necessary, or at least concomitant; the nidus, perhaps, in which the animalculine existence is formed, or the pabulum by which it is supported. Whatever instrumentality vegetable putrefaction may have, I am inclined to suspect, for several reasons, that animalculine putrefaction is the immediate cause of those diseases, whatever they are, which are usually attributed to standing waters. It will, I believe, be found universally, that no such disease is ever derived from any standing waters, which are not to a considerable extent covered with a scum; and perhaps most, if not all of those which have this covering, will be found unhealthy. The New-England lakes, so far as I have observed, are universally free, even from the thinnest pellicle of this nature, are pure potable water, are supplied almost wholly by subjacent springs, and are, therefore, therefore, too cool, as well as too much agitated by winds, to permit, ordinarily, the existence of animalcules.'-vol. i. p. 346. Dr. Another opinion of the doctor's is that wheat is injured by dressing the land with animal manure; vegetation,' he says, ' is forced by it, so that the vessels burst and produce what is called the blast; or, if the season be stormy, the crop lodges by reason of its own weight.' The same effect, he shews, is not produced by other dressings which are less stimulant. A notion akin to this has been advanced in this country, that artificial pastures being thus forced are less nutritious than natural ones; and that the animals which are raised upon them are consequently of a laxer fibre, and the flesh less wholesome as well as less savoury; hence the superiority of heath or mountain mutton to the improved breeds, and of wild meats in general to tame. Dwight mentions a peculiar breed of sheep called, from some resemblance in their form, the Otter breed-it is the only in stance wherein man, for his own advantage, has availed himself of à defect in nature. An ewe in New England brought forth twins, thick and clumsy in body, with the fore legs remarkably short and bent inward, so as distantly to resemble what are called club-feet.' They were male and female, and the owner observing that they were not disposed to wander, and unable to leap the stone inclosures, raised a breed from them, which has increased to many thousands. In cases where the breed has been crossed, the lambs have in every instance, according to his information, entirely resembled either the sire or the dam, never exhibiting the least discernible mixture. As neither the wool nor the flesh is inferior to that of ordinary sheep, their quietness and inactivity must render them peculiarly valuable in any country where it is no part of the sheep owner's system that his flock should get their own livelihood in their neighbour's inclosures. A physiological change in the human species fell under the author's immediate observation, which is of considerable interest as bearing immediately upon a very important question. Dr. Dwight saw a negro, Henry Moss by name, a native of Virginia, whose complexion, without any apparent cause, or the slightest diminution of his general health, was gradually becoming white, and that not of a leprous or cadaverous tint, but of a fresh and healthy hue. According to the man's own account the change was first perceived under and round the roots of his finger nails, and proceeded faster on those parts where the skin was covered than where it was exposed. In the course of four years the breast, arms, legs, and thighs had become wholly white; the hands, feet, and face were hideously spotted, the skin of the head also was changed in spots, and wherever it was changed the hair had had become straight and flaxen. In four years more the change was almost complete. From the beginning he had been a hale, sound man, and no change had taken place in his habits of life; nor was he conscious of any peculiar sensation except that, where the discolouration was going on, it was just perceptible that the skin was more sensitive than in other parts. The same process had taken place to the same extent in one civilized Indian, and had commenced in three others. From hence Dr. Dwight fairly infers that 'the varieties observed in the complexion and hair of the human species furnish no probable argument that they sprang from different original stocks. A black man in one instance, and a red man in another, have become almost entirely white, and without any such change in the internal parts of the constitution as to occasion a single new sensation of any consequence. The ordinary course of Providence, operating agreeably to natural and established laws, has wrought the change here. A similar course of Providence is therefore justly concluded to have wrought the change from white to red and to black, or, what is perhaps more probable, from red to white on the one hand, and from red to black on the other.' It appears elsewhere that the author is disposed to admit the old interpretation of the word Adam, as signifying red earth, and he has probably allowed some weight to it in this part of his reasoning. He notices that the Colchians, who were black in the time of Herodotus, are now as white as the people of Europe: the question must be asked whether they are the same people? or whether a black tribe has not been exterminated by a nation of white conquerors? A good cause is injured by adducing a weak argument for it. It is more to the point when he observes that the Jews have every tint of complexion, from that of Poland, Germany, and England to that of the black Jews of Hindostan. The same thing might perhaps be said of the Portugueze, were it not that, in their African possessions, a mixture of blood is so general, that it must always be suspected. The most important illustration which he adduces is from direct personal observation. The change of the blacks,' he says, whose ancestors were introduced into New England, is already very great as to their shape, features, hair, and complexion; within the last thirty years I have not seen a single person of African descent who was not many shades whiter than the blacks formerly imported directly from Guinea.' After he himself had thus distinctly perceived the effect of local circumstances upon the organization of man, Dr. Dwight ought not to have felt such indignation at a remark in this Journal,* that those circumstances had produced a trace of savage character both in |