March 1, 1869.] 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



self, whether he has not sometimes beeu too hasty 

 and excessive in the slaughter he has committed 

 amongst his favourites. A butterfly-catcher should 

 be a butterfly-lover, and if he is really gladdened by 

 the sight of these insects recreating themselves in 

 the sunshine or the shady dell, he will avoid un- 

 necessarily thinning their numbers. We speak of 

 hasty and excessive slaughter — we see occurring too 

 many instances of each. To catch a butterfly, to 

 kill it without examining its appearance, and then 

 to throw it away because it is rubbed, bespeaks an 

 unjustifiable carelessness. The needless accumula- 

 tion of a large number of specimens of each species 

 (useless in cases of varieties) is a foible which, to 

 say the least, is not one of the indulgences of which 

 the entomologist can be proud. We have heard of 

 a collector whose " series " was " three rows " of 

 each insect ! And, for the sake of exchanging to 

 advantage, bofrh butterflies and moths have been 

 swept down by the hundred when a collector came 

 upon a metropolis of some valued species. What- 

 ever may be said in favour of the practice of ex- 

 change — and that much may be said I do not doubt 

 — this certainly may be urged on the other side, 

 that it has a tendency to occasion the destruction of 

 species. I could not but read, therefore, with 

 regret that a society had been formed for the express 

 purpose of facilitating exchanges, and the corre- 

 spondents thereof are recommended to "send as 

 many of each species as possible." Great might be 

 the lamentation in the woodland glades were the 

 visions of the past really true, and the " children of 

 the sun" endued with some measure of human 

 insight and knowledge. For the wholesale slaughter 

 of butterflies has a more immediate tendency to 

 extinguish or diminish a species than the same prac- 

 tice carried on amongst the moth tribes. We have 

 but a very small allotment of British butterflies, and 

 it is easy to see that out of this number some are 

 likely in a few years to become extinct, or at least 

 exceedingly scarce. There are other causes at work 

 here, undoubtedly, besides the collectors : a great 

 deal of beautiful country around our towns is 

 becoming rapidly absorbed by the needs of a 

 growing population, and common and wood sud- 

 denly disappear that land may be rendered arable 

 and food-producing. Many of our butterflies are so 

 very local that a destruction of their food-plant in a 

 few spots, or the capture of a large number by col- 

 lectors, will go far towards making the species die 

 out. Unfavourable seasons, also, have a greater 

 effect upon butterflies than upon moths. They are 

 certainly partially protected by the circumstance 

 that their larva are usually difficult to find ; were 

 it not so, some species would fare still worse than 

 they do now. I appeal to all who hope to be but- 

 terfly-collectors in the coming season, and ask them 

 in the case of rare or local species to avoid all 

 needless destruction. C. 



NEW VINE DISEASES. 



TN the month of June, 1SG3, I received from 

 -*- Hammersmith a Vine-leaf covered with minute 

 gall-like excrescences, " each containing," in the 

 words of my correspondent, "a multitude of eggs, and 

 some perfect Acari, which seem to spring from 

 them, and sometimes a curiously corrugated 

 Coccus." A microscopical examination of these 

 objects soon revealed the fact that the excrescences 

 were galls of a peculiar character, caused by the 

 irritation from the sucking of the leaf by the full- 

 grown insect enclosed within the gall (which was 

 partially opened on its upper surface) — that the 

 insect itself belonged to the family Aphida;, and not 

 to the Coccidae (or at least that it was intermediate 

 in character between the types of the two families) — 

 that the eggs were those of the perfect insect itself, 

 which had formed the gall in which it had enclosed 

 itself as in a living tomb, and that the perfect 

 " Acari " were minute young, hatched from these 

 eggs. The information thus gained was, however, 

 zoologically incomplete, from the want of a 

 knowledge of the male insect, which doubtless is 

 winged, and which would have enabled me more 

 satisfactorily to have determined the situation of the 

 insect in the system. Hence, with multitudes ot 

 other semi-complete observations, the matter re- 

 mained unpublished in my portfolio. 



In the autumn of 1S67, and during the past year, 

 my attention has, however, been several times 

 directed to the same insect, which appears to have 

 become extensively disseminated, and has exhibited 

 its powers of mischief in a most unlooked-for 

 manner, since not only have I received further 

 specimens of the Vine-leaves infested in the manner 

 above mentioned, but have had portions of the roots 

 of Vines sent to me from different quarters, the 

 rootlets of which had been sucked by a wingless 

 insect, which I cannot in any manner distinguish 

 from those of the galls on the leaves. From 

 Cheshire I received in September, 1867, leaves from 

 a young Vine, growing with twenty-five others in a 

 house seventy-two feet long, in which it was the 

 only one attacked, having previously made fourteen 

 feet of wood since it was planted in the Eebruary 

 preceding, the insects being only found in the young 

 leaves within five feet of the top. In the following 

 month the same correspondent sent rootlets from 

 his Vines, attacked by the same insect, and I have 

 since received it from other correspondents in 

 different parts of England, as well as Ireland. In 

 the latter mode of attack the perfect insect makes a 

 wound in the delicate rootlet, by inserting its 

 rostrum into the wood, and sometimes this is so 

 firmly imbedded as to remain in its position 

 when the insect is removed by the hand; decay 

 is thus induced, which "penetrates in the form 

 of little cankerous spots, and sometimes extends 



