INSECTS INJURIOUS TO THE VINE. Ij^.' 



which are taken to Jerusalem, where they are used for making 

 knife and poniard handles. Burckhardt^ saw a pair three 

 feet and a half in length. Thus the ips of Homer may be 

 known and dreaded by the warriors of that country. 



But this meaning of the word ips disappears, or is at least 

 somewhat altered, in the Greek authors after Homer, whose 

 works have come down to us ; and in Strabo, Theophrastus, 

 and the wi'itings of learned agriculturists, passages from which 

 we shall give presently, the word ips is always used for 

 an insect or a worm injurious to the vine, and consequently 

 for a larva, the food of which is plants, and not horn. 



However, we again find the word with the Homeric signi- 

 fication in a remarkable passage of St. Chrysostom, which I 

 shall translate : — " The injurious effects produced by copper on 

 the body, by rust on iron, by the moth on wool, and by the 

 ipes on horn, vice produces on the soul."' 



However, I maintain that the ipes mentioned in the best 

 Greek authors, i. e. by those whose writings are of the highest 

 authority, is an insect which eats the vine. 



Strabo says :™ — " The Erythreans gave Hercules the name 

 Ipoctone, i, e. the destroyer of the ipes, as those insects are 

 called that injure the vine." 



Theophrastus," after having told us how the worms come in 

 wheat, adds, that the ipes are produced by a south wind, and 

 farther on he says, *' There are, however, some places where 

 the vine is not infested by them ;^fsuch as open, exposed, and 

 dry situations." 



We read in the Geoponicks :° " To prevent the little worms 



^ Burckhardt, Travels in Syria and the Holy Land, 1822, p. 405 ; Fiscli., 

 Synopsis Animal, p. 483 ; Cuvier, Regne Animal, 2d edit, torn i. p. 275. 



' Sanct. J. Chrysost. ap. torn, iv, p. 669, E. St. Chrysostom uses the word scolex 

 for the worm which eats wood. In the grammarians of the lower ages, scolex is 

 used for the earth-worm (which is the worm properly so called) ; scolex signifies 

 also, according to the same grammarians, the worm that infests the ox, which is 

 quite another animal, either an intestinal worm, or the larva of an insect. St. 

 Chrysostom's scolex, or wood-eating worm, must be the larva of an insect, and 

 Aristotle employs the word in this sense, since he says, every insect comes from 

 a scolex. 



"■ Strab. edit. Almenoven, in folio, liv. xiii. p. 613 au 912, de la traduction 

 Franc, torn. iv. p. 213. 



" Theoph. de Cans. Plant, liv, iii. c. 22, (ou 23 de Ted. de Schneider, torn. ii. 

 p. 299). Scaliger translates ips by convolmilus; why he does so we shall see hereafter. 



° Geoponicas, edit. Niklas, c. 53, v. 423. 



