THE BIG EATERS 



97 



Hint immense tracts are denuded of vegetation, 

 which is gnawed at the roots. The forester's 

 shrubs, the farmer 's harvests, the gardener's plants, 

 just when every- 

 thing seems pros- 

 perous, some fine 

 morning, hang 

 withered, smitten 

 to death. The 

 worm has passed 

 that way, and all 

 is lost. Fire 

 could not have 

 committed more 

 frightful ravages. 

 *A miserable yel- 

 low louse, hardly 

 visible, lives un- 

 d T ground, where it attacks the roots of the grape 

 vine. It is called phylloxera. Its calamitous breed 

 1 1 1 n i atens to destroy all our vineyards. Some grubs, 

 small enough to lodge in a grain of wheat, ravage the 

 wheat in our granaries and leave only the bran. 

 Others browse the lucerne so that the mower finds 

 nothing left. Others, for years, gnaw at the heart 

 <>f the \\ood of the oak, poplar, pine, and divers, other 

 largo trees. Others, which turn into those little 

 white butterflies flying around the lamp in the even- 

 ing and called moths, eat our cloth stuffs bit by bit, 

 and finish by reducing them to rags. Others attack 

 .^cntinir, old furniture, and reduce them to pow- 

 d. r. Others But I should never get through if 



Phylloxera 



