INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 199 



fresh foliage, thus anticipating the supply of the suc- 

 ceeding year and cutting off the prospect of fruit''. — In 

 some parts of Germany the cherry-tree has an enemy 

 equally injurious. A splendid beetle of the weevil tribe 

 (Mj/nchites Bacchus, Herbst,) bores with its rostrum 

 through the half-grown fruit into the soft stone, and 

 there deposits an egg. The grub produced from it feeds 

 upon the kernel, and, when about to become a pupa, 

 gnaws its way through the cherry, and sometimes not 

 one in a thousand escapes'*. This insect is fortunately 

 rare with us, and has usually been found upon the black- 

 thorn. The cherry-fly also (Tephrites Cerasi, Latr.) 

 provides a habitation for its maggot in the same fruit, 

 which it invariably spoils''. 



The blossoms of our pear-trees, as we learn from 

 Mr. Knight, are often rendered abortive by the grub of 

 a brown beetle : and a considerable quantity of its fruit 

 is destroyed by that of a small four-winged fiy, which 

 occasions it to drop off prematurely '^. This would seem 

 to be a saw-fly, and is probably the species which 

 Reaumur saw enter the blossom of a pear before it 

 was quite open, doubtless to deposit its eggs in the em- 

 bryo fruit. He often found in young pears, on opening 

 them, a larva of this genus ^. — A little moth likewise 



* Peck's Nat. Hist, of the Slug-ivorm, 9. 



'' IVost Kleiner Beytrag. 38. " Reaum. ii. 477. 



^ On the .dpple and Pear, 158. The Beetle Mr. Knight alludes to is 

 probably the CurcuUo ohlongus, L., which answers his description, and is 

 common on pear-trees. — In Holland, it is stated in a little tract on this 

 subject {Ferhaiideling ten bemijze &,"c. door F, H. van Berck. 8vo. Haar- 

 lem 1807) that the great destroyer of the blossoms of their apple and 

 pear-trees is the larva of another beetle, Ctirculio Pomorum, L., which 

 from the name and Gyllenhal's addition to the habitat given by Linna 

 — " quas destruit" — should seem to be injurious in Sweden also, 



^ Reaum. ubi supr. 475. 



