INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 115 



One of the most delicious, and at the same time most useful, of all our 

 fruits is the grape : to this, as you know, we are indebted for our raisins, 

 for our currants, for our wine, and for our brandy ; you cannot therefore 

 but feel interested in its history, and desire to be informed, whether, like 

 those before enumerated, this choice gift of Heaven, whose produce 

 " cheereth God and man," 1 must also be the prey of insects. There is a 

 singular beetle, common in Hungary (Lethrus Cephalotes\ which gnaws 

 off the young shoots of the vine, and drags them backward into its burrow, 

 where it feeds upon them : on this account the country people wage con- 

 tinual war with it, destroying vast numbers. 2 Five other beetles also 

 attack this noble plant : three of them, mentioned by French authors 

 (Rhynchites Bacchus, Eumolpus vitis, and Haltica oleracea), devour the 

 young shoots, the foliage and the footstalks of the fruit, so that the latter 

 is prevented from coming to maturity 3 ; a fourth (C. corruptor Host), by a 

 German, which seems closely allied to Otiorhynchus notatus, before men- 

 tioned, if it be not the same insect, which destroys the young vines, often 

 killing them the first year, and is accounted so terrible an enemy to them, 

 that not only the animals, but even* their eggs, are searched for and 

 destroyed, and to forward this work people often call in the assistance of 

 their neighbours. 4 And a fifth, Otiorhynchus sulcatus, also occasionally does 

 considerable injury to the vine in this country, by gnawing off the young 

 shoots. 5 Various lepidopterous larvae are still more injurious to the vine. 

 In the Crimea the small caterpillar of a Procris or Ino (genera separated 

 from Sphinx L.), related to /. statices, is a most destructive enemy. As 

 soon as the buds open in the spring, it eats its way into them, especially 

 the fruit-buds, and devours the germ of the grape. Two or three of these 

 caterpillars will so injure a vine, by creeping from one germ to another, 

 that it will bear no fruit nor produce a single regular shoot the succeeding 

 year. 6 In Italy, especially in Piedmont and Tuscany, the vines are often 

 devastated by the larva of another species of the same genus, Procris 

 ampelophaga Passerini 7 ; in Germany a different species does great injury 

 to the young branches, preventing their expansion by the webs in which it 

 involves them 8 ; and a fourth (Tortrix fasciana) makes the grapes them- 

 selves its food : a similar insect is alluded to in the threat contained in 

 Deuteronomy 9 , while in France it is the caterpillar of a small moth, the 

 Tortrix vitana Bosc. (Pyralis vitana and Pillerana Fab., P. danticana 

 Walck.), which does the most injury by gnawing the footstalk of the 

 leaves and branches of grapes 10 , and of late years to such an extent in the 

 Maconnais and other districts, that the attention of the government having 



1 That is, " High and Low," Judges, ix. 13. 

 8 Sturm, Deutschland's Fauna, i. 5. 



3 Latreille, Hist. Nat. xi. 66. 331. According to Kbllar (163.), however, in 

 Austria it is R. betuleti, and not R. Bacchus which is injurious to the vines ; and 

 the case is the same, according to M. Silbermann, as to the vines of Alsatia and the 

 banks of the Rhine. 



4 Host in Jacquin. Collect, iii. 297. 



5 Westwood in London's Gardener's Mag. for April, 1837. 



6 Pallas's Travels in 8. Russia, ii. 241. 



7 Memoria sopra due Specie <? Insetti noscivi, &c. 



8 Jacquin. Collect, ii. 97. 

 Deut. xxviii. 39. 



10 Walckenaer in Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, iv. 687. ; Gue'rin, art. Pyrale, Diet. 

 Pittoresque tfffist. Nat pp. 409 416. 



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