OF SELBORNE. 365 



the product of spiders, but could find none. Nothing 

 was to be seen connected with it but many brown oval 

 husky shells, which by no means looked like insects, 

 but rather resembled bits of the dry bark of the vine. 

 The tree had a plentiful crop of grapes set, when this 

 pest appeared upon it; but the fruit was manifestly 

 injured by this foul incumbrance. It remained all the 

 summer, still increasing, and loaded the. woody and 

 bearing branches to a vast degree. I often pulled off 

 great quantities by handfuls ; but it was so slimy and 

 tenacious that it could by no means be cleared. The 

 grapes never filled to their natural perfection, but turned 

 watery and vapid. Upon perusing the works after- 

 wards of M. de Reaumur, I found this matter perfectly 

 described and accounted for. Those husky shells, 

 which I had observed, were no other than the female 

 Coccus, from whose sides this cottonlike substance 

 exudes, and serves as a covering and security for their 

 eggs.'* 



To this account I think proper to add, that, though 

 the female Cocci are stationary, and seldom remove 

 from the place to which they stick, yet the male is a 

 winged insect; and that the black dust which I saw 

 was undoubtedly the excrement of the females, which 

 is eaten by ants as well as flies. Though the utmost 

 severity of our winter did not destroy these insects, yet 

 the attention of the gardener in a summer or two, has 

 entirely relieved my vine from this filthy annoyance 1 . 



As we have remarked above that insects are often 

 conveyed from one country to another in a very unac- 

 countable manner, I shall here mention an emigration 



1 It is not usual for the Coccus of the vine to continue for several years 

 in succession attached to a tree in the open air in England, the severity 

 of the winter commonly destroying it at an early period. But to plants 

 kept in greenhouses it often proves a serious evil. It can scarcely be 

 regarded as an indigenous insect, and has probably been introduced into 

 this country, from time to time, with the exotic plants to which it is at- 

 tached, and perhaps with others also of the numerous kinds that orna- 

 ment our gardens. E. T. B. 



