INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 109 



against which the florist is obliged to use various precautions to protect 

 his choicest carnations, pinks, and dahhas from its ravages. 



In our sti:ves and greenhouses the Aphides often reign triumphant ; for, 

 if they be not discovered and destroyed when their numbers are small, 

 their increase becomes so rapid, and their attack so indiscriminate, that 

 every plant is covered and contaminated by them, beauty being converted 

 into deformity, and objects before the most attractive now exciting only 

 nausea and disgust. The coccus (C. Hcspcridum) also, which looks like 

 an inanimate scale upon the bark, does considerable injury to the two prime 

 ornaments of our conservatories, the orange and the mjrtle ; drawing oft" 

 the sap by its pectoral rostrum, and thus depriving the plant of a portion 

 of its nutriment, at the same time that it causes unpleasant sensations in 

 the beholder from its resemblance to the pustule of some cutaneous 

 disease. .Similar injury is done by the mealy-bug {Coccus Adonid urn L.) 

 to many soft-leaved dicotyledonous plants, sucli as the coffee-tree, Justlcia, 

 &c., as well as to Musa, Canua, Sec. ; and various species of scale insects, 

 separated from Coccus by Bouche under the names of Aspidiolus Ncrii, 

 RoscE, &c., attack the oleanders, rosjcs, bays, cactuses, &c. ; while the red 

 spider {Erylhrccus tclarius), spinning its web over the under surface of the 

 leaves, draws out their juices with its rostrum, and thus enfeebles, and, if 

 unmolested, in the end, destroys them.^ 



I must next conduct you from the garden into the orchard and fruit erz/ ; 

 and here you will find the same enemies still more busy and successful in 

 their attempts to do us hurt. The strawberry, which is the earliest 

 and at the same time most grateful of our fruits, enjoys also the privi- 

 lege of being almost exempt froiu insect injury. A jumping weevd (0/- 

 chestes Fragarice) is said by Fabricius to inhabit this plant ; but as the 

 same species is abundant in this country upon the beech, the beauty of 

 which it materially injures by the numberless holes which it pierces in the 

 leaves, and has, I believe, never been taken upon the strawberry, it seems 

 probable that Smidt's specimens might have fallen upon the latter from 

 that tree.*^ The only insect I have observed feeding upon this fruit is the 

 ant, and the injury that it does is not material. The raspberry, the fruit of 

 which arrives later at maturity, has more than one species of these animals 

 for its foes. Its foliage sometimes suffers much from the attack of Me- 

 lolontha horticola^, a little beetle related to the cockchafer : when in flower, 

 the footstalks of the blossom are occasionally eaten through by a more, 

 minute animal of the same order, Bijturus fomentosus, which I once saw 

 prove fatal to a whole crop, and of which the larva feeds upon the 

 fruit itself; and bees frequently anticipate us, and, by sucking the fruit 

 with their proboscis, spoil it for the table. Gooseberries and currants, 

 those agreeable and useful fruits, a common object of cultivation both to 



1 KOllar on Ins. wj. to Gardeners, &c. 178 — 182. 



2 This kind of misnomer frequently occurs in entomological authors. — Thus, for 

 instance, the Curculin {Rhi/ncliites) AlliaricB of Linne, feeds upon tlio hawthorn, and 

 Curculio {Cryplorhynchus) Lapat/ii upon the willow (Curtis in Linn. Trims, i. 86.); 

 Iiut as AUiaria is common in lunvthorn hedges, and docks often grow under willows, 

 the mistake in question easily happened; when, however, such mistakes are dis- 

 covered, the Trivial Name ought certainly to be altered. 



^ I consider this insect as the type of a new subgenus (Plii/Uopertha K. MS.), 

 which connects those tribes of MeloUmtlia F., that have a niesosternal prominence 

 with those that have not. Of tliis subgenus I possess six species. It is clearly dis- 

 tinct from AnisopUa, under which De Jean arranges it 



