212 DISEASES OF INSECTS. 



good wine and honey is recommended ; and as a cure, to 

 place in the hive combs containing cells filled with bee- 

 bread a . But one of the worst maladies to which these 

 useful animals are subject, is that called by Schirach 

 Faux Couvain. It originates with the larvae; and is caused 

 either by their being fed with unwholesome food, or when 

 the queen, as sometimes* happens, lays her eggs so that 

 the head of the grub is not in a proper position for 

 emerging from the cell when the period for its disclosure 

 is arrived : the consequence is, that in both cases it dies 

 and becomes putrid, which sometimes produces a real 

 pestilence in a hive. The remedy for this evil is to cut 

 away the infected combs, and to make the bees undergo 

 a fast of two days b . The hive should be cleaned and 

 fumigated, by burning under it aromatic plants. 



The cultivators of the silkworm in France have given 

 names to several diseases to which that animal is subject. 

 One is called La Rouge, and is supposed to be occasioned 

 either by too great heat, or by too sudden a transition 

 from cold to heat. It takes place when the caterpillar 

 is first hatched ; which lives perhaps, but in a very sickly 

 state, till it should spin its cocoon and assume the pupa, 

 when it expires. Another degree of the same disease is 

 called Les Harpions or Passis. A second distemper of 

 this animal is Des Vetches, Le Gras or La Saune : this 

 is a mortal disease, supposed to be of a putrid nature, 

 and produced by mephitic air; it shows itself after 

 the second moult, but rarely after the subsequent ones. 

 When a caterpillar is first attacked, changing the air 

 may prove a remedy ; but when the disease has made 



a Schirach Hist. &c. 54. Reaum. v. 713. N. Diet. <THist. Nat. i. 42. 

 b N. Diet. d'Hist. Nat. i. 42. Schirach Hist. 56. 



