30 



decay ; and wliere the vines are taken up and examined, this worm is 

 found on ahnost every root."' 



Now, Danville in Kentucky lies about a hundred miles to the 

 south of Cincinnati, Ohio, but it actually lies about ten miles to the 

 nortli. of Cobden, in Illinois, where grape-vines are beginning to be 

 grown pretty extensively. Consequently, even if it should turn out 

 that the Cincinnati correspondent of the Agricultural Department 

 has raised a false alarm, yet as this pernicious borer indubitably exists 

 in large numbers at Danville, there is a reasonable probability that it 

 may within a few years, now that grapes are being grown so exten- 

 sively, spread from that point into Southern and Central Illinois. It 

 may perhaps have even done so already. Hence it appears to be a 

 useful precaution to describe the insect and its operations in such a 

 manner, that it may be recognized at once, wherever and whenever it 

 may occur, by our Illinois grape-growers; more particularly as, being 

 hitherto considered an exclusively Southern insect, it is entirely un- 

 noticed in Dr. Harris's excellent book on Injurious Insects, and only 

 receives a passing notice of eight lines in Dr. Fitch's very useful 

 lieports on the Noxious Insects of New York. 



Unlike the common Peach Borer, this larva lives exclusively 

 underground, the mother-moth depositing her eggs on the collar of the 

 grape-vine close to the earth, and the young larvte, as soon as they 

 hatch out, immediately descending on to the roots. They seem to 

 confine themselves entirely to the bark and sap-wood of the roots, 

 leaving the heart-wood untouched, which of course renders their op- 

 erations much more destructive to the life of the vine. The roots that 

 I received from Kentucky were internally sound and solid, but ex- 

 ternally they looked all of them as if a drunken carpenter had been 

 diligently scooping away the sap-wood with a quarter-inch gouge, 

 almost their entire surface being furrowed by crooked and irregular 

 channels, semicircular in their outline if a cross-section of them was 

 made, inside some of whicb lay the larvae, with their naked backs 

 touching the surrounding earth. According to Mr. Krone, however, 

 "the larva working underground mines and destroys the vine-roots, 

 and being shielded by the bark defies the action of remedies for its 

 extermination." When full-grown these larvas measure from 1 inch 

 to 1| inch in length; and are whitish, elongate, 16-legged grubs, 

 scarcely distinguishable from those of the Peach Borer. Like that 

 insect, they form an oval, pod-like cocoon of a gummy substance cov- 

 ered with little bits of wood and dirt, inside which they pass into the 

 pupa state. These cocoons may be met Avith at various times through 

 the summer near the roots of the infested vine ; and, as is also the case 



