THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 89 



time during its annual course, and winged males are so rare in the 

 galls that I have never been able to find them, though I have opened 

 thousands upon thousands of the galls during the summer and fall 

 months. Dr. Shimer, indeed, is the only fortunate individual who has 

 found the winged insect in the galls, and, as he himself tells us, he 

 only succeeded in finding four specimens in the fall of the year, after 

 cutting open ten thousand galls; and he has really given us no proof 

 that his winged specimens were really males, and not females. Let 

 us hope, however, that by pointing out the gaps in the biological his- 

 tory of this insect, attention will be drawn to them, so that they may 

 be the more readily filled. 



These discoveries lead us to some most important practical con- 

 siderations. It now becomes evident that this insect can be trans- 

 ported from one place to another on the roots, either upon trans- 

 planted vines or in earth containing fibrous roots. Doubtless it was 

 by some such mode as this that the insect was introduced into France 

 from this country. It maybe in this manner likewise that it has in 

 part spread from one portion of our country to another, though as it 

 is found indigenously on the wild Frost Grape, the greater probabili- 

 ties are that it exists wherever this wild grape is found, and has grad- 

 ually spread from it on to the cultivated varieties. These probabili- 

 ties are strengthened by the fact that new grape wood is always rooted 

 in the spring, when the lice, according to my views, are leaving the 

 roots. But the important fact remains, that the insect winters on the 

 roots, and that to exterminate it from a vineyard we have but to root 

 up and destroy, late in the fall, such vines as were affected with the 

 galls. From the poor success that has attended the experiments 

 made abroad to destroy the lice on the roots, and from the fact that it 

 is so difficult to reach them, I have little hope that any other remedy 

 will be found than that of extermination by the means indicated, or 

 by plucking and destroying the gall-infested leaves as fast as they ap- 

 pear in the spring. 



Another very important practical lesson may be derived from the 

 facts here mentioned, namely, that no variety of the Frost Grape 

 ( Y cordifolia) should be cultivated and encouraged where those of 

 the Fox Grape ( Y Idbvusca) or of the Summer Grape ( Y. aestivalis) 

 are known to be as good. Some of our best grape-growers, especially 

 in the Mississippi Valley, already discard the Clinton and its nearest 

 relatives as worthless, and, considering its liability to this disease, we 

 heartily commend their conduct. 



At the 15th annual meeting of the Illinois State Horticultural 

 Society, at Galesburg, the Clinton was highly recommended by Mr. 

 D. B. Wier, of Lacon, Ills., principally for its vinous and medicinal 

 qualities; but in this recommendation he did not meet with much 

 support except from Dr. Hull the State Horticulturist, who also, in 

 the course of his remarks sustained Mr. Wier in his recommendation 

 of the Clinton, though in our own State Horticultural Report for lS6i 



