INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 115 



One of the most delicious, and at the same time most useful, of all our 

 fruits is the grape : to this, as you know, we are indebted for our raisins, 

 for our ciuTants, for our wine, and for our brandy ; you cannot therefore 

 but feel interested in its history, and desire to be informed, whether, like 

 those before enumerated, this choice gift of Heaven, whose produce 

 "chcereth God and man,"^ must also be the prey of insects. There is a 

 singular beetle, common in Hungary {Lcthrus Cephahtes) , which gnaws 

 off the young shoots of the vine, and drags them backward into its burrow, 

 where it feeds upon tliem : on this account the country people wage con- 

 tinual war with it, destroying vast numbers.^ Five other beetles also 

 attack this noble plant : three of them, mentioned by French authors 

 (^Rhi/nchites Bacchus, Eumalpus vitis, and Haltica oleracea), devour the 

 j'oung shoots, the fohage and the footstalks of the fruit, so that the latter 

 is prevented from coming to maturity^ ; a fourth (C cornijifor Host), by a 

 German, which seems closely allied to Otiorhynchus notalus, before men- 

 tioned, if it be not the same insect, which destroys the young vines, often 

 killing them the first year, and is accoimted so terrible an enemy to them, 

 that not only the animals, but even their eggs, are searched for and 

 destroyed, and to forward this work people often call in the assistance of 

 their neighbours.* And a fifth, Oliorhynchus sulcatus, also occasionally does 

 considerable injury to the vine in this country, by gnawing off the young 

 shoots.* Various lepidopterous larvae are still more injurious to the vine. 

 In the Crimea ihe small caterpillar of a Procris or Ino (genera separated 

 from Sphinx L.), related to /. statices, is a most destructive 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 Italv, especiall}' in Piedmont and Tuscany, the vines are often 

 devastated by the larva of another specie s of the same genus, Procris 

 ampelophaga Passerini '' ; in Germany adifilTent species does great injury 

 to the young branches, preventing their expansion by the webs in which it 

 involves them ^ ; and a fourth (Torlrix fasc'tana) makes the grapes them- 

 selves its food : a similar insect is alluded to in the threat contained in 

 Deuteronomy'', while in France it is the caterpillar of a small motli, the 

 Tortrix vitana Bosc. {Pyralis vitana and Pillerana Fab., P. danlicana 

 Walck.), which does the most injury by gnawing the footstalk of the 

 leaves and branches of grapes i°, and of late years to such an extent in the 

 Maconnais and other districts, that the attention of the government having 



1 That is, " High and Low," Judges, is. 13. 



* Sturm, Deutschland's Fauna, i. 5. 



3 Latreille, Hist. Nat. xi. 6(i. 331. — According to Kollar X163.), however, in 

 Austria it is li. betuleti, and not R. Bacchus which is injurious to the vines; and 

 the case is the same, according to M. Silbermann, as to the vines of Alsatia and the 

 banks of the Rhine. 



* Host in Jacquin. Collect, iii. 297. 



•■' Westwood in Loudon's Gardener's Mag. for April, 1837. 



6 Pallas's Travels in S. Russia, ii. 24L 



7 Blemoria sopra due Specie d' Insetti noscivi, &c. 



8 Jacquin. Collect, ii. 97. 



9 Deut. xxviii. 39. 



10 Walckenaer in Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, iv. G87. ; Gudrin, art. Fyrale, Diet. 

 Fittoresque d'Hist. Nut. pp. 409 — 416. 



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