228 THE GRAPE CULTURIST. 



any extended investigation in this direction ; conse- 

 quently, cannot speak from personal knowledge on this 

 point. A few years later we began to hear of the out- 

 break of a serious disease in the vineyards of France, 

 and for a time it was supposed to be a fungus, causing a 

 rotting, orpourridis, as it was designated by the French 

 vineyardists. In the spring of 1868, Prof. J. E. Plan- 

 chon, of Montpelier, announced that the malady was 

 caused by the puncture of a minute insect of the plant- 

 louse family of Apliididce, and bearing a close resem- 

 blance to the gall-louse so often seen on the leaves of the 

 Clinton and a few other varieties of the grape in this 

 country. Later in the same year Prof. Planchon had so 

 carefully and thoroughly studied this pest that he was 

 enabled to fully describe it in its various stages, and then 

 he gave it the name which it now bears, viz., Phylloxera 

 vastatrix. But Prof. Planchon was not aware, at the 

 time, that the insect he was investigating, and which 

 was ravaging the vineyards of France, was the same pest 

 that lived in the galls on the leaves and roots of vines 

 here, and the credit of discovering the identity of the 

 two is due to Dr. C. V. Riley, then State entomologist 

 of Missouri, and later chief of the Division of Entomol- 

 ogy, U. S. Department of Agriculture. 



Dr. Eiley's investigations of this pest have been ex- 

 ceedingly thorough, and extending over many years, 

 leaving, as it would seem, very little more to be learned 

 in regard to its habits and history. The literature of 

 the subject has become so extensive that it would require 

 a dozen good sized volumes to give even an epitome of 

 what has been published in this country, to say nothing 

 of the voluminous reports of specialists which have ap- 

 peared in France and other European countries ; conse- 

 quently, want of space compels me to refer only to some 

 of the more prominent characteristics of this insect. 



As is now well known, there are two distinct forms, 

 or types, which are very constant; one, the gallacola, 



