196 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS- 



and thus depriving the plant of a portion of its nutri- 

 ment, at the same time that it causes unpleasant sen- 

 sations in the beholder from its resemblance to the pus- 

 tule of some cutaneous disease. 



I I must next conduct you from the garden into the 

 orchard and fruitery ; 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 privilege of being almost exempt from insect 

 injury. A jumping weevil {Curculio Fragarice, F.) is 

 said by Fabricius to inhabit this plant ; but as the same 

 species is abundant in this country upon the beech, the 

 beauty of whicli it materially injures by the numberless 

 holes with which it pierces the leaves, and has I believe 

 never been taken upon the strawberry, it seems proba- 

 ble that Smidt's specimens might have fallen upon the 

 latter from that tree''. The only insect I have ob- 

 served feeding upon this fruit is the ant, and the in- 

 jury 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 Mdolontha 

 Horticola, F., a little beetle related to the cockchafer ; 

 when in flower the footstalks of the blossom are occa- 

 sionally eaten through by a more minute animal of the 



' This kind of misnomer frequently occBrs in entomological authors. — • 

 Thus, for instance, the Curculio AlliaritB of Linne feeds upon the haw- 

 thorn, and Curculio Lapathi upon the willow (Curtis in Linn. Trans. 

 i. 86.) ; but as miliaria is common in hawthorn hedges, and docks often 

 grow under willows, the mistake in question easily happened: when, 

 however, such mistakes are discovxred, the Trivial Name ought certainlv 

 to be altered. 



