

.— =e =P == 
es" = S5 = Ss ~e ss 
as SS E525 

SESE sruce 
274 THE INSECT WORLD. 
yards. It was at the end of the sixteenth century that th 
pyralis first showed itself in the environs of Paris, in the territory 
of Argenteuil. ‘The inhabitants of this commune,” writes the 
Abbé Lebceuf, “looked on the insects which spoiled their vines 
in the spring of 1562 as a visitation of God. The Bishop of 
Paris gave orders that they should offer up public prayers for 
the diminution of these insects, and that they should join to their 
prayers, exorcisms, without leaving the church.” Prayers, pro- 
cessions, exorcisms, were again had recourse to, in 1629, in 1717, 
and in 1738, to stop the ravages of this insect among the vines of 
Colombes, in the territory of Aj. 
The country of the M&connais and the Beaujolais became in 
their turn the theatre of the ravages of the pyralis. These 
ravages very soon increased and spread. In 1886, 1837, 1838, 
this plague raged in the departments of the Sadne et Loire, of 
the Rhone, of the Céte-d’Or, of the Marne, of the Seine et Oise, 
of the Charente Inferieure, of the Haut-Garonne, of the Pyrénées- 
Orientales, and of the Hérault. 
To give an idea of the losses which may be occasioned by the 
pyralis, in a period of ten years (1828-1837), twenty-three com- 
munes comprised in the two departments of the Sadne et Loire 
and of the Rhéne lost seventy-five thousand hectolitres of wine a 
year, which may be valued at one million five hundred thousand — 
francs. If we were to calculate the supply of articles of all sorts 
which this great number of casks of wine would have necessitated, | 
the imposts on their transport, the duty, the taxes levied on their 
sale, the carriage by land and water, which would have brought 
receipts into the treasury, and lastly the diminution of taxes which 
had to be granted for seven years to the vine proprietors in the 
department of the Sadne et Loire, and in 1837 in the department 
of the Rhéne, and which amounted to a total of more than a hun- 
dred thousand francs, we shall find that the ravages of the vyralis 
caused in these two departments an annual loss of three millions 
four hundred and eight thousand francs, and as the visitation 
lasted ten years, we get the enormous sum total of thirty-four | 
millions destroyed by the ravages of one species of insect. The 
moth of the pyralis (Fig. 287) shows itself from the 10th to the 
20th of June. It is yellowish, more or less shot with gold. | 

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