208 THE M&DOC 



Phylloxera vastatrix, first made its presence manifest 

 in the Medoc. This creature is not indigenous to the 

 Old World ; it is a native of North America, whence it 

 was imported among some American vines about the 

 middle of last century. It belongs to a family closely 

 akin to the Aphides and Chermes, but is destitute of the 

 apparatus for secreting honey- dew, which distinguishes 

 that race of parasites. 



Like the Aphides, the Phylloxera assumes different 

 forms in a fixed cycle of generations. Winged females 

 appear in August and September, each of which lays 

 three or four eggs on the under surface of a vine leaf, 

 whence are hatched wingless males and females. Thus 

 far the vine-lice are harmless, for in these two genera- 

 tions they have no piercing or sucking organs. The 

 wingless female contents herself with laying a single 

 egg on the bark of the vine, and dies. The eggs do not 

 hatch till the following spring, when mischief begins in 

 earnest. The third generation, also wingless, descends 

 into the earth, pierces the roots of the plant, sucks its 

 juices, and propagates itself with such amazing fecundity 

 that, according to a writer in the Agricultural Gazette 

 for September 1887, the descendants of one of these 

 wingless females may number 62,500,000,000 at the 

 end of the third generation. And whereas there are 

 born five or six generations in a single summer, it may 

 be well said that their numbers defy calculation. These 

 minute pests (a full-grown female is only l-25th of an 

 inch long) make such a drain on the plant that its 

 roots become warped and wasted, the foliage withers, 

 and death follows sooner or later. It has been reckoned 



