170 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



One of the most delicious, and at the same time most useful, 

 of all our fruits is the grape : to this, as you know, we are 

 indebted for our raisins, for our currants, for our wine, and 

 for our brandy ; you cannot therefore but feel interested in 

 its history, and desire to be informed, whether, like those be- 

 fore enumerated, this choice gift of Heaven, whose produce 

 " cheereth God and man must also be the prey of insects. 

 There is a singular beetle, common in Hungary (Letlirus 

 cephalotes), which gnaws off the young shoots of the vine, and 

 drags them backward into its burrow, where it feeds upon 

 them : on this account the country people wage continual 

 war with it, destroying vast numbers.^ Five other beetles 

 also attack this noble plant : three of them, mentioned by 

 French authors, {Bliynchites Bacchus, Eumolpus vitis, and 

 Haltica oleracea), devour the young shoots, the foliage and the 

 footstalks of the fruit, so that the latter is prevented from 

 coming to maturity^; a fourth (C corruptor Host,) by a 

 German, which seems closely allied to Otiorhynchus notatus, 

 before mentioned, if it be not the same insect, which destroys 

 the young vines, often killing them the first year, and is ac- 

 counted so terrible an enemy to them, that not only the ani- 

 mals, but even their eggs, are searched for and destroyed, and 

 to forward this work people often call in the assistance of their 

 neighbours.* And a fifth, Otiorhynchus sulcatus, also occa- 

 sionally does considerable injury to the vine in this country, 

 by gnawing off the young shoots.^ Various lepidopterous 

 larv93 are still more injurious to the vine. In the Crimea the 

 small caterpillar of a Procris or Ino (genera separated from 

 Sphinx L.), related to J. statices, is a most destructive enemy. 



in Madeira, and that he has also hatched it from lemons and peaches {ZooL 

 Journ. V. 199.), seems to be the same species with Petalophora ( Trypeta Wied.), 

 capitata Macq. (Dipteres, ii. 454.), so named from the two singular clavate 

 processes between the eyes of the male. It may be easily obtained from de- 

 caying oranges, on the outside of which the grub assumes the pupa state. 



1 That is, " High and Low," Judges, ix. 13. 



2 Sturm, Deutschland's Fauna, i. 5. 



3 Latreille, Hist. Nat. xi. 66. 331. — According to Kbllar (163. ), however, in 

 Austria, it is E. hetuleti, and not R. Bacchus, which is injurious to the vines ; 

 and the case is the same, according to M. Silbermann, as to the vines of Alsatia 

 and the banks of the Rhine. 



4 Host in Jacquin. Collect, iii. 297. 



^ Westwood in Loudon's Gardeners Mag. for April, 1837. 



