150 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



enemy. As soon as the buds open in the spring, it eats its way into them; 

 especially the fruit buds, and devours the germ of the^ grape. Two or 

 three of these caterpillars will so injure a vine, by creeping from one 

 germ to another, that it will bear no fruit nor produce a single regular 

 shoot the succeeding year.^ In Italy, especially in Piedmont and Tus- 

 cany, the vines are often devasted by the larva of another species of the 

 same genus, Procris ompelophaga Passerini^ ; in Germany a different 

 species does great injury to the young branches, preventing their expan- 

 sion by the webs in which it involves them^; and a fourth {Tortrix fas- 

 ciana) makes the grapes themselves its food : a similar insect is alluded to 

 in the threat contained in Deuteronomy^, while in France it is the cater- 

 pillar of a small moth, the Tortrix vitana Bosc. (Pyralis vitana and Pil- 

 lerana Fab., P. danticana Walck.), which does the most injury by gnaw- 

 ing the footstalk of the leaves and branches of grapes'', and of late years 

 to such an extent in the Maconnais and other districts, that the attention 

 of the government having been called to the mischief, under their direc- 

 tion my lamented friend Professor Audouin was, at the period of his un- 

 timely death, which Entomology so deeply deplores, engaged on a fine 

 work embracing a complete history of the insect, with figures of it in 

 every state, and an account of the best means of destroying it. The 

 worst pest of the vine in this country is its Coccus (C. vitis). This ani- 

 mal, which fortunately is not sufficiently hardy to endure the common 

 temperature of our atmosphere, sometimes so abounds upon those that are 

 cultivated in stoves and greenhouses, that their stems seem quite covered 

 with little locks of white cotton ; which appearance is caused by a fila- 

 mentous secretion transpiring through the skin of the animal, in which 

 they envelop their eggs. Where they prevail they do great injury to the 

 plant by subtracting the sap from its foliage and fruit, and causing it to 

 bleed^; and, to close the list without extending it by alluding with M. 

 Walckenaer to the insects only occasionally injurious to the vine, you are 

 perfectly aware of the eagerness with which wasps, flies, and other insects, 

 attack the grapes when ripe, often leaving nothing but the mere skin for 

 their lordly proprietor. 



There are some of these creatures that attack indiscriminately all fruit- 

 trees. One of these is the Cicada septemdecim (so called because, accord- 

 ing to Kalm, it appears only once in seventeen years'). The female ovi- 

 posits in the pith of the twigs of trees, where the grubs are hatched, and 

 do infinite damage both to fruit and forest-trees.^ Birds greedily devour 

 them ; and a curious fact is mentioned by Dr. Harlan of Philadelphia 

 (who confirms their septemdecenary appearance), that young fowls which 

 eat them lay eggs with colorless yolks.^ Another, the caterpillar of the 

 butterfly of the hawthorn (Pieris cratagi), which, in 1791, in some parts 



' Pall as' s Travels in S. JRussia, ii. 241, 



* Memoria sopra due Specie d' in Setti noscivi, &c. 



3 Jacquin. Collect, ii. 97. •♦ Deut. xxviii. 39. 



* Walckenaer in Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, \v. 687.; Gaerin, art. Pyrale, Diet. Pittoresque 

 d'Hist. Nat. pp. 409— 416. 



* According to M. Walckenaer, in his elaborate and learned Essay on the Insects injuri- 

 ous to the Vine (Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, iv. 687.), it is the Coccus adonidvm which is in- 

 jurious to vines in hot-houses in France, while the Coccus vitis attacks those in the open air. 



'' Travels, ii. 6. ^ Collinsoa in Philos. Trans, liv. x. 65. 



9 Trans. Ent. Soc. Land. i. proc. ixx. 



