167 



Article IX. 



Besearches relative to the Insects, known to the Ancients and 

 Moderns, hy tvhich the Vine is infested, and 07i the means of 

 preventing their Ravages. By M. le Baron Walckenaer. 



From the Annales de la Societe Entomologique de France, vol. iv. p. 687, et seq. 



Introduction, 

 General Considerations. — Division of these Researches into three Sections. 



W HEN the human intellect began in Europe to emerge from the 

 darkness and ignorance in which it had for many centuries been buried, 

 its progress was everywhere tlie same, and the same method was adopted 

 for the advancement of knowledge in all the sciences. 



Before the invention of printing the ancients were the only sources 

 of instruction ; after the discovery of that art their works became more 

 extensively circulated and better known, and as the necessary conse- 

 quence of the abundance and the perfection of their labours, the admira- 

 tion which they had excited was augmented, and increased effect was given 

 to the ascendency they had acquired over the human mind. The only 

 ambition of the learned was to understand, to arrange, and to comment 

 upon the notions which they had transmitted to us. A treatise upon 

 any branch whatever of human knowledge was merely a compilation, 

 more or less complete and methodical, of what the ancients had written 

 upon the subject : an addition was sometimes made of what the moderns 

 had thought or observed on the same topics, but these supplements had 

 not the same weight and authority as the rest of the work in the estima- 

 tion of either the author or the reader. A remark or a proposition was 

 judged of little value to which could not be added ut ait Aristoteles, 

 lit ait Plinius, ut ait Hippocrates, or other similar phrases. 



Happily for the progress of natural history, the great number of 

 new productions brought into Europe from the countries recently dis- 

 covered, at the end of the fifteenth and the commencement of the six- 

 teenth centuries, soon rendered apparent the insufficiency of the works 

 of the ancients with respect to this science. 



It was perceived that the greater number of objects for the obser- 

 vation and description of which opportunity was afforded were unknown 

 to them, and that they had very superficially observed and very imper- 



