318 PHYLLOXERA VASTATRIX, OR 
year. The vineyards visited showed the disease to 
have broken out in several different places, and in 
these we found some hundreds of diseased plants. 
There was no Phylloxera on the roots of either the 
dying or the dead vines. On the roots of vines still 
possessing a certain amount of healthy growth we 
found the Phylloxera in groups, neither numerous nor 
near together ; indeed the roots, even the long ones, 
upon which we were able to count one hundred indi- 
vidual insects were very rare. The general vegetation 
is normal, and vines quite close to diseased ones had 
no Phylloxera on their roots. In this state of things 
many members of the Agricultural Society naturally 
asked, ' Can it be that the destruction of a plant so 
robust and hardy as is the vine should be attributable 
to no other cause than the action of a microscopic 
hemiptera called Phylloxera vastatrix, and which is 
found here in numbers comparatively insignificant ? ' " 
No. 6. 
Dr. Hooker to Viscount Enfield. — (Received 20th 
September.) 
Royal Gardens, Kew, 
My Lord, ' 19th September, 1872. 
Having examined the papers relating to the injury 
which the cultivation of the vine has already suffered 
in France and Portugal, or which is apprehended, from 
the attacks of the Phylloxera vastatrix, I have to 
request that you will lay before the Eight Honorable 
the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs the following 
remarks which have suggested themselves to me in 
their perusal. 
