214 BARON WALCKENAER ON THE INSECTS 



the common broom, the elm, and twenty other plants*. The Sphinx 

 Elpenor, or the Sphinx of the vine of Geoffroy, (this is not the Sphinx 

 Vitis of modern entomologists, an American butterfly which does not 

 live upon the vine,) is frequently found upon the vine, but it is also 

 met with not less frequently upon the Epilobium, the Salicaria, the 

 balsam, and the convolvulus -j-. Lastly, the Sphinx Porcellus, or the 

 Sphinx with red indented bands, the caterjoillar of which is sometimes 

 found upon the vine, but still more often upon the honey-suckle, la- 

 vender, and more especially upon the yellow bed-straw, Galium ve- 

 rumi. The last two species have caterpillars as large as the little 

 finger, and as they keep upon the summit of the shoots they may be 

 easily removed. 



These are the caterpillars or larvae of Lepidoptera which the Greeks 

 and Latins, Avhen speaking of insects infesting the vine, designated by 

 the general names of Kampe or Eruca ; but they did not confound 

 these larvae with worms, and they knew that they underwent metamor- 

 phoses. 



X. Phtheir. — Tholea or Tholaath. — Coccus Vitis. — Kermes of the 

 Vine. — Coccus Adonidum. — Greenhouse Coccus. — The Phtheir or 

 louse of the vine, Avhich Ctesias mentions as an insect which causes the 

 vine to perish, and which in the Geoponics is classed with the cater- 

 pillars among that plant's greatest enemies, can correspond only to the 

 Coccus Vitis, to the Cocci, or the Kermes of the vine §. We know 

 that the Cocci or gall-insects, or the Cochineals, with the Aphides, 

 are the insects which, from their small size and their rapid multiplica- 

 tion, are the most similar to the louse ; their females also, like lice, are 

 apterous, or without wings. The Cocci cover so completely the bark 

 of the trees that it has a scurfy appearance. When the female has de- 

 posited her eggs, her body dries up and becomes a solid crust, which 

 covers the eggs, and its squamous surface is not unlike fat nits. These 

 insects do harm by piercing the wood with their sharp proboscis, which is 

 formed of a sheath having numerous joints, and three bristles or darts of 

 great tenuity. With this tube they suck the sap and cause it to flow. 



* Arctia purpurea, Fabr. Entom. Syst., vol. iii. part 1. p. 466. No. 185. 

 Walckenaer, Fauii. Paris., vol. ii. p. 291. GoA&rt, Papillons nocturnes, vol. i. 

 p. 339. No. 105. 



t Sphinx Elpenor, Fabr. Ent. Syst., vol. iii. p. 372. No. 51. Walckenaer, 

 Faun. Paris, vol. ii. p. 276. No. 6. Godart, Crepusculaires, p. 46. 



X Sphinx Porcellus, Fabr. Ent. Syst., vol. iii. p. 373. Walckenaer, Faun. 

 Paris., vol. ii. p. 279. Godart, Crepusculaires, p. 51. Duponehel, Iconographie 

 des Chenilles, tribe of Sphingidep, pi. 5. fig. l, a, b. 



§ Ctesias, Indicorum, cap. 21. p. 253. edit. Baehr, Frankf., 1824, 8vo. 

 Ctesias speaks of a red insect which in India destroys the trees producing am- 

 ber, as in Greece the Phtheir destroys the vine : Larcher, p. 341. vol. vi. of his 

 translation of Herodotus, has badly rendered this passage. 



