274 THE INSECT WOELD. 



yards. It was at the end of the sixteenth century that this 

 pyralis first showed itself in the environs of Paris, in the territory 

 of Argenteuil. "The inhabitants of this commune," writes the 

 Abbe" Leboauf, " looked on the insects which spoiled their vines 

 in the spring of 1562 as a visitation of God. The Bishop of 

 Paris gave orders that they should offer up public prayers for 

 the diminution of these insects, and that they should join to their 

 prayers, exorcisms, without leaving the church." Prayers, pro- 

 cessions, exorcisms, were again had recourse to, in 1629, in 1717, 

 and in 1733, to stop the ravages of this insect among the vines of 

 Colombes, in the territory of Ai. 



The country of the Maconnais and the Beaujolais became in 

 their turn the theatre of the ravages of the pyralis. These 

 ravages very soon increased and spread. In 1836, 1837, 1838, 

 this plague raged in the departments of the Saone et Loire, of 

 the Rhone, of the C6te-d'0r, of the Marne, of the Seine et Oise, 

 of the Charente Inferieure, of the Haut-Garonne, of the Pyrene*es- 

 Orientales, and of the H^rault. 



To give an idea of the losses which may be occasioned by the 

 pyralis, in a period of ten years (1828-1837), twenty- three com- 

 munes comprised in the two departments of the Saone et Loire 

 and of the Rhone lost seventy-five thousand hectolitres of wine a 

 year, which may be valued at one million five hundred thousand 

 francs. If we were to calculate the supply of articles of all sorts 

 which this great number of casks of wine would have necessitated, 

 the imposts on their transport, the duty, the taxes levied on their 

 sale, the carriage by land and water, which would have brought 

 receipts into the treasury, and lastly the diminution of taxes which 

 had to be granted for seven years to the vine proprietors in the 

 department of the Saone et Loire, and in 1837 in the department 

 of the Rhone, and which amounted to a total of more than a hun- 

 dred thousand francs, we shall find that the ravages of the pyralis 

 caused in these two departments an annual loss of three millions 

 four hundred and eight thousand francs, and as the visitation 

 lasted ten years, we get the enormous sum total of thirty-four 

 millions destroyed by the ravages of one species of insect. The 

 moth of the pyralis (Fig. 287) shows itself from the 10th to the 

 20th of June. It is yellowish, more or less shot with gold. 



