PLAGUES IN NATURE.
[TO THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR." ] Sin,—Your correspondent of August 24th gives some very interesting particulars, personally observed, concerning the usefulness of frogs in destroying wasps. He says "that a single smallish frog has been known to take three wasps one after the other." This is a good word for our persecuted friend the frog, and his confrere the toad. But, Sir, it amazes me to note how each writer in his turn dilates on the best modes of taking away wholesale the lives of any particular insect or other creature that happens to be his bite noire for the nonce, apparently without giving a thought to the life- work performed by the unlucky objects of his aversion, or of their uses as links in that wonderfully constructed chain of life which we call " Nature." Edith Carrington, a charming writer, who has recently delighted lovers in natural history by her " Appeals on Behalf of the Speechless," says in a more recent little book, "Workers without Wage :"—" We must look in all the works of God to find mercy bidden somewhere, though we may have to search for a long time, for we are not able to comprehend His great ways with our feeble sight at a first glance." A great outcry has this year been raised against the "plague of wasps ; " and much has been written and said as to the best way of destroying entire nests. But I have failed to observe that any attention has been drawn to the relation between what is hastily called their "over- increase," and the simultaneous appearance of huge swarms of blight, a scourge which has descended upon our fruit and vegetable crops; the two phenomena being a clear case of cause and effect, ,and the one insect invasion intended by Nature to counterbalance the other. The ladybird is well- known to multiply in exact proportion to the hop-blight. The wasp, by the same mysterious law, abounds when it is needed to thin out the aphis on which it feeds largely. Our garden has not this year produced a single dish of eatable broad-beans, owing to the ravages of a black variety of blight, and a new gardener was preparing to follow the traditions of his race, and tar and burn out all the wasps nests about the place ; he was amazed at my distinct orders to desist. He was reassured, however, that should his grapes be in danger, muslin bags were to be had for the asking. So wasps have on our premises revelled in a garden of Eden, unmolested and unmolesting. Not a soul has been stung, for no one has offered to wage war with them, and our fruit-yield has been quite beyond our own consumption. Even the gardener is, I think, a convert to my theories, for he recently took me to the peach-house to show three trees whose appearance warranted their truth. Of these trees, two were laden with fruit, while the middle one was covered with black aphides only. The fruit to right and left was untouched by wasps ; they had confined their attentions wholly to the blighted tree. The author of " Workers without Wage" quotes that, " in the year 1811, which was remarkable for its small number of wasps, flies became a great nuisance from their over-abundance ; it was supposed to be on account of the insufficiency of wasps, which feed on their grabs as well as on the complete fly." I think that the year 1893 would have been equally memorable for its armies of flies but for the opposition forces of the wasps. As I write, wasps are flying in and out of these windows preying upon the flies upon the panes, or carrying them off.
Are the flies, however, of no further use than as food for wasps P I have before me a most interesting letter cut from a Bristol paper, entitled " The Cure for Cholera," which indicates another mode of working by humble tools in the band of the All-Merciful. Speaking of the different cholera epidemics through which the writer had passed at various times, he says : " I can speak of an extraordinary physical phenomenon,—complete stagnation of the air ; not a breath of wind, and not a bird to be seen, while whole crowds of flies swarmed, to which I attribute the eventual saving of the town [Newcastle] by consuming the malaria in the air." By " con- suming" the writer doubtless means destroying or removing, by collecting on their sticky legs and wings the germs of disease floating in the air. He adds :—" They were painting the outside of the Bank of England at the time a stone-colour, and I re- member it soon became one black mass of flies." Here, then, we see the evil of the cholera-germ met, and an antidote provided by the lowly fly, permitted to over-increase in the absence of the enemies of the race. All birds at the time disappeared.
The American Field, in a recent issue, records as a fact that when an epidemic of cholera threatens any locality, the birds leave the neighbourhood a few days before the appearance of the scourge; this was noticed in the recent outbreak at Ham- burg. In 1884, the same phenomenon occurred at Marseilles and Toulon, where all the birds, as if actuated by a common impulse, abandoned the plague-stricken cities, and took up their abode at Hyeres. In 1872, all the sparrows left the town of Prezemsyl, Galicia, two days before the pest broke out. Let us hope they will remain with us this year !
To the student of nature all this is very interesting, impres- sing the lesson that nothing is " common or unolean" in the sight of Him who has sanctified to some service everything that He has created. " In wisdom " has He made them all. The earth is " full," not of " plagues " but " of His riches." " His tender mercy is over all His works." Shall we then so hastily destroy life which we can never give, and condemn as " pests " creatures whose uses may be for the present hidden from our finite sight, and which appear to our rash judgment as miserable scourges, yet, coming as they do from the very Fountain-head of wisdom and love, may be—must be—blessings in disguise P-1 am, Sir, &c., FLORENCE SUCKLING. Romsey, Hampshire, September 8th.
[We believe we can add another curious instance. It is probable that the terrible pest of marshy districts in the tropics, the mosquito, by its incessant minute bleedings, keeps down the liability to fever. At least, it is certain that the very few persons whom they will not bite suffer from that liability.— En. Spectator.]
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