212 DISEASES OF INSECTS. 
"•ood wine and honey is recommended ; and as a cure, to 
place in the hive combs containing cells filled with bee- 
bread a . But one of the worst maladies to which these 
useful animals are subject, is that called by Schirach 
Faux Couvain. It originates with the larvae; and is caused 
either by their being fed with unwholesome food, or when 
the queen, as sometimes happens, lays her eggs so that 
the head of the grub is not in a proper position for 
emerging from the cell when the period for its disclosure 
is arrived : — the consequence is, that in both cases it dies 
and becomes putrid, which sometimes produces a real 
pestilence in a hive. The remedy for this evil is to cut 
away the infected combs, and to make the bees undergo 
a fast of two days b . The hive should be cleaned and 
fumigated, by burning under it aromatic plants. 
The cultivators of the silkworm in France have given 
names to several diseases to which that animal is subject. 
One is called La Rouge •, and is supposed to be occasioned 
either by too great heat, or by too sudden a transition 
from cold to heat. It takes place when the caterpillar 
is first hatched ; which lives perhaps, but in a very sickly 
state, till it should spin its cocoon and assume the pupa, 
when it expires. Another degree of the same disease is 
called Les Harpions or Passis. A second distemper of 
this animal is Des Vaches, Le G?-as or La Saune : this 
is a mortal disease, supposed to be of a putrid nature, 
and produced by mephitic air ; it shows itself after 
the second moult, but rarely after the subsequent ones. 
When a caterpillar is first attacked, changing the air 
may prove a remedy ; but when the disease has made 
a Schirach Hut. &c. 54. Reaum. v. 713. N. Diet. d'Hist. Nat.l 42. 
b N. Diet. d'Hist. Nat. i. 42. Schirach Hist, 56. 
