INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 161 



In our stoves and greenhouses the Aphides often reign 

 triumphant ; for, if they be not discovered and destroyed 

 when their numbers are small, their increase becomes so 

 rapid, and their attack so indiscriminate, that every plant is 

 covered and contaminated by them, beauty being converted 

 into deformity, and objects before the most attractive now 

 exciting only nausea and disgust. The coccus (C Hespe- 

 ridurn) also, which looks like an inanimate scale upon the 

 bark, does considerable injury to the two prime ornaments of 

 our conservatories, the orange and the myrtle ; drawing off 

 the sap by its pectoral rostrum, and thus depriving the plant 

 of a portion of its nutriment, at the same time that it causes 

 unpleasant sensations in the beholder from its resemblance to 

 the pustule of some cutaneous disease. Similar injury is 

 done by the mealy-bug (^Coccus Adonidum L.) to many soft- 

 leaved dicotyledonous plants, such as the colFee tree, Justicia, 

 &c., as well as to Musa, Canna, &c. ; and various species of 

 scale insects, separated from Coccus by Bouche under the 

 names of Aspidiotus Nerii, JRoscb, &c., attack the oleanders, 

 roses, bays, cactuses, &c. ; while the red spider (Erythrceus 

 telarius)^ spinning its web over the under surface of the leaves, 

 draws out their juices with its rostrum, and thus enfeebles, 

 and, if unmolested, in the end, destroys them.^ 



I must next conduct you from the garden into the orchard 

 and fruitery ; and here you will find the same enemies still 

 more busy and successful in their attempts to do us hurt. 

 The strawberry, which is the earliest and at the same time 

 most grateful of our fruits, enjoys also the privilege of being 

 almost exempt from insect injury. A jumping weevil ( Or- 

 chestes Fragarics) is said by Fabricius to inhabit this plant ; 

 but as the same species is abundant in this country upon the 

 beech, the beauty of which it materially injures by the num- 

 berless holes which it pierces in the leaves, and has, I believe, 

 never been taken upon the strawberry, it seems probable 

 that Smidt's specimens might have fallen upon the latter 

 from that tree.^ The only insect I have observed feeding 



I Kollai' on Ins. inj. to Gardeners, Sec. 178 — 182. 



^ This kind of misnomer frequently occurs in entomological authors. — Thus, 

 for instance, the Curculio ( Rhynchites) Alliarice of Linn^, feeds upon the hawthorn. 



VOL. I. 



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