206 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY IXSECTS. 



ness with which wasps, flies, and other insects attack 

 the grapes when ripe, often leaving- nothing but the 

 mere skin for their lordly proprietor. 



There are some of these creatures that attack indis- 

 criminately all fruit-trees. One of these is the Telfigo- 

 nia septendecim, F., (so called because, according to 

 Kalm, it appears only once in seventeen years ^.) The 

 female oviposits in the pith of the twigs of trees, where 

 the grubs are hatched, and do infinite damage both to 

 fruit- and forest- trees''. — Another, the caterpillar of the 

 butterfly of the hawthorn, (Papilio Crata'gi, L.) which 

 in 1791, in some parts of Germany, stripped the fruit- 

 trees in general of their foliage'^. — In France also in 

 1731 and 1732 that of a moth which seems related to 

 the brown-tail moth (Bombj/x phceorhxEa, F.), whose 

 history has been given by the late Mr. Curtis, was so 

 numerous as to occasion a general alarm. The oaks, 

 elms, and white-thoin hedges looked as if some burning 

 w ind had passed over them and dried up their leaves : 

 for, the insect devouring only one surface of them, that 

 which is left becomes brown and dry. They also laid 

 waste the fruit-trees, and even devoured the fruit; so that 

 the parliament published an edict to compel people to 

 collect and destroy them : but this would in a great 

 measure have been ineffectual, had not some cold rains 

 fallen, which so completely annihilated them, that it 

 was diflScult to meet with a single individual*^. 



If we quit the orchard and fruit-garden for a walk in 

 our plantations and groves^ we shall still be forced to 

 witness the sad effects of insect devastation ; and when 



■ Travels, ii. 6. "* Collinson in Philos. Trans, liv. x. 65. 



" Rosei,I. ii. 15. " Reaum. ii. 122. 



