148 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



the roots, do a still greater injury to the trees. ^ — A Coccus, as it should 

 seem from the description, imported about thirty years ago from the Mai> 

 ritius, or else with the Constantia vine from the Cape of Good Hope, has 

 destroyed nearly nine tenths of the peach trees in the Island of St. He- 

 lena, where formerly they were so abundant, that, as in North America, 

 the swine were fed with their fruit. Various means have been employed 

 to destroy this plague, but hitherto without success.^ — The imperial pine- 

 apple, the glory of our stoves, and the most esteemed of the gifts of Pomona, 

 cannot however precious, be defended from the injuries of a singular spe- 

 cies of mite, before mentioned, the red Spider of gardeners, {Erythraus 

 telarius), which covers it, and other stove plants, with a most delicate, but 

 at the same time very pernicious web ; and the Coccus bromelicE is often 

 as great a pest, preying upon the leaves and young fruit beneath a white 

 downy secretion."^ — The olive-tree, so valuable to the inhabitants of the 

 warmer regions of Europe, often nourishes in its berries the destructive 

 maggot of a fly {I)acus olece) ; and the caterpillar of a little moth (Tinea 

 oleella), which preys upon the kernel of the nucleus, occasions them to 

 fall before they are ripe. The larvae of two beetles, Hyhsinus oleiperda 

 and Phloiotribus olece, attack the bark and alburnum of the young branches ; 

 another beetle, Otiorhynchus meridionalis Schon., devours the young 

 shoots and leaves ; and the sap is injuriously abstracted by Coccus olece, 

 and by Fsylla olece Fons.^, as well as by Thrips physapus, which in Tus- 

 cany has of late years threatened the olive trees of some districts with 

 destruction, by attacking the young leaves and buds.^ — Every one who eats 

 nuts knows that they are very often inhabited by a small white grub ; this 

 is the offspring of a weevil (Balaninus nucum), remarkable for its long and 

 slender rostrum, with which it perforates the shell when young and soft, 

 and deposits an egg in the orifice. In France it sometimes happens, when 

 the chestnuts promise an abundant crop, that the fruit falls before it comes 

 to maturity, scarcely any remaining upon the trees. The caterpillar of a 

 moth which eats into its interior is the cause of this disappointment.^ Of 

 fruits the date has the hardest nucleus ; yet an insect of the same tribe 

 with the above, that feeds upon its kernel, is armed with jaws sufficiently 

 strong to perforate it, that it may make its escape when the time of its 

 change is arrived, and assume the pupa between the stone and the flesh. 

 And another moth, the Pyralis brunnea, feeds on the pulp of the fruit, 

 and there undergoes its metamorphosis.'' The date is eaten als^by a bee- 

 tle which Hasselquist calls a Dermestes.^ — Another foreign fruit, the tam- 

 arind, has its stone, which is nearly as hard as that of the date, attacked by 

 a weevil of the same genus as the corn-weevil of which, in the larva state, 

 sometimes as many as forty are found in a single stone.^ The pome- 



' Dr. Smiili Barton's Letter in Pkilos. Magaz. xxii. 210. — William Davy, Esq. American 

 Consul of the port of Hull, long resident in the United States, informed me, that though he 

 had abundance of peaches at his country-house, German Town, near Philadelphia, he could 

 never succeed with the nectarine, the fruit constantly falling oft" perforated by (he grub of 

 some insect. * Descr. of the I. of St. Helena, 147. 



3 Trans. Erit. Soc. Land. i. proc. Ixiv. ; and see also We.stvvood's Obs. i. 206. 



* M. Boyer de Fonscoloinbe in Ann. Soc. Eat. de France, ix. 101. 



* Passerini, Alcuni Notizie, Ace. 



« Reaum. ii. 505. '' Gu6rin-Meneville, Revue Zoolog. 1841, p. 246. 



^ Ibid. ii. 507. and Hasselquist's Travels in the Levant, 428. 

 ^ Christy, in Trans. Ent. Soc. Land. i. 



