196 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



tree a . The only insect I have observed feeding upon 

 this fruit is the ant, and the injury that it does is not 

 material. The raspberry, the fruit of which arrives later 

 at maturity, has more than one species of these animals 

 for its foes. Its foliage sometimes suffers much from 

 the attack of Melolontha horticola b , a little beetle re- 

 lated to the cockchafer : when in flower the footstalks of 

 the blossom are occasionally eaten through by a more 

 minute animal of the same order, Byturus tomentosus, 

 which I once saw prove fatal to a whole crop ; and bees 

 frequently anticipate us, and by sucking the fruit with 

 their proboscis spoil it for the table. Gooseberries 

 and currants, those agreeable and useful fruits, a com- 

 mon object of cultivation both to poor and rich, have 

 their share of enemies in this class. The all-attacking 

 Aphides do not pass over them, and the former espe- 

 cially are sometimes greatly injured by them; their ex- 

 crement falling upon the berries renders them clammy 

 and disgusting, and they soon turn quite black from it. 

 In July 1812 I saw a currant-bush miserably ravaged 

 by a species of Coccus, very much resembling the Coc- 

 cus of the vine. The eggs were of a beautiful pink, and 

 enveloped in a large mass of cotton-like web, which 



* This kind of misnomer frequently occurs in entomological au- 

 thors. Thus, for instance, the Curculio (Rynchites) Alliance of 

 Linne feeds upon the hawthorn, and Curculio (Cryptorhynchus] La- 

 pathi upon the willow (Curtis in Linn. Trans, i. 86.) ; but as Alliaria 

 is common in hawthorn hedges, and docks often grow under willows, 

 the mistake in question easily happened : when, however, such mis- 

 takes are discovered, the Trivial Name ought certainly to be altered. 



b I consider this insect as the type of a new subgenus (Phylloper- 

 tha, K. MS.), which connects those tribes of Melolontha, F. that have 

 a mesosternal prominence with those that have not. Of this sub- 

 genus I possess six species. It is clearly distinct from Anisoplia, under 

 which DeJean arranges it. 



