167 
ARTICLE IX. 
Researches relative to the Insects, known to the Ancients and 
Moderns, hy which the Vine is infested, and on the means of 
' preventing their Ravages. By M.LtE BARON WALCKENAER. 
From the Annales de la Société Entomologique de France, vol. iv. p. 687, et seq. 
Introduction, 
General Considerations. — Division of these Researches into three Sections. 
Wauen the human intellect began in Europe to emerge from the 
darkness and ignorance in which it had for many centuries been buried, 
its progress was everywhere the same, and the same method was adopted 
for the advancement of knowledge in all the sciences. 
Before the invention of printing the ancients were the only sources 
of instruction; after the discovery of that art their works became more 
extensively circulated and better known, and as the necessary conse- 
quence of the abundance and the perfection of their labours, the admira- 
tion which they had excited wasaugmented, and increased effect was given 
to the ascendency they had acquired over the human mind. The only 
ambition of the learned was to understand, to arrange, and to comment 
upon the notions which they had transmitted to us. A treatise upon 
any branch whatever of human knowledge was merely a compilation, 
more or less complete and methodical, of what the ancients had written 
upon the subject: an addition was sometimes made of what the moderns 
had thought or observed on the same topies, but these supplements had 
not the same weight and authority as the rest of the work in the estima- 
tion of either the author or the reader. A remark or a proposition was 
judged of little value to which could not be added wt ait Aristoteles, 
ut ait Plinius, ut ait Hippoerates, or other similar phrases. 
Happily for the progress of natural history, the great number of 
new productions brought into Europe from the countries recently dis- 
covered, at the end of the fifteenth and the commencement of the six- 
teenth centuries, soon rendered apparent the insufficiency of the works 
of the ancients with respect to this science. 
'. It was perceived that the greater number of objects for the obser- 
vation and description of which opportunity was afforded were unknown 
to them, and that they had very superficially observed and very imper- 
