Chapter XI: Letter VI: Injuries Caused by Insects (2)

Our more dainty and delicate fruits, at least such as are usually so accounted, the apricot, the peach, and the nectarine, originally of Asiatic origin, are not less subject to the empire of insects than the homelier natives of Europe. Certain Aphides form a convenient and sheltered habitation for themselves, by causing portions of the leaves to rise into hollow red convexities; in these they reside, and, with their rostrum pumping out the sap, in time occasion them to curl up, and thus deform the tree and injure the produce. The fruit is attacked by various other enemies of this class, against which we find it not easy to secure it: wasps, earwigs, flies, wood-lice, and ants, which last communicate to it a disagreeable flavour, all share with us these ambrosial treasures; the first of them as it were opening the door, by making an incision in the rind, and letting in all the rest.--The nucleus of the apricot is also sometimes inhabited by the caterpillar of a moth, which devouring the kernel causes the fruit to fall prematurely[344].--In this country, however, these fruits may be regarded as mere luxuries, and therefore are of less consequence; but in North America they constitute an important part of the general produce, at least the peach, serving both as food for swine, and furnishing by distillation a useful spirit. The ravages committed upon them there by insects are so serious, that premiums have been offered for extirpating them. A species of weevil, perhaps a _Rynchites_, enters the fruit when unripe, probably laying its eggs within the stone, and so destroys them. And two kinds of _Zygæna_, by attacking the roots do a still greater injury to the trees[345].--A Coccus, as it should seem from the description, imported about thirty years ago from the Mauritius, or else with the Constantia vine from the Cape of Good Hope, has destroyed nearly nine-tenths of the peach-trees in the Island of St. Helena, where formerly they were so abundant, that, as in North America, the swine were fed with them. Various means have been employed to destroy this plague, but hitherto without success[346].--The imperial pine-apple, the glory of our stoves, and the most esteemed of the gifts of Pomona, cannot, however precious, be defended from the injuries of a singular species of mite, the _red Spider_[347] of gardeners, (_Erythræus telarius_) which covers them, and other stove plants, with a most delicate but at the same time very pernicious web.--The olive-tree, so valuable to the inhabitants of the warmer regions of Europe, often nourishes in its berries the destructive maggot of a fly (_Oscinis Oleæ_); and the caterpillar of a little moth (_Tinea Oleella_), which preys upon the kernel of the nucleus, occasions them to fall before they are ripe.--Every one who eats nuts knows that they are very often inhabited by a small white grub; this is the offspring of a weevil (_Balaninus Nucum_) remarkable for its long and slender rostrum, with which it perforates the shell when young and soft, and deposits an egg in the orifice.--In France it sometimes happens, when the chestnuts promise an abundant crop, that the fruit falls before it comes to maturity, scarcely any remaining upon the trees. The caterpillar of a moth which eats into its interior is the cause of this disappointment[348].--Of fruits the date has the hardest nucleus; yet an insect of the same tribe with the above, that feeds upon its kernel, is armed with jaws sufficiently strong to perforate it, that it may make its escape when the time of its change is arrived, and assume the pupa between the stone and the flesh. The date is eaten also by a beetle which Hasselquist calls a _Dermestes_[349].

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 before enumerated, this choice gift of Heaven, whose produce "cheereth God and man[350]," must also be the prey of insects. There is a singular beetle, common in Hungary, (_Lethrus 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[351].--Three other beetles also attack this noble plant: two of them, mentioned by French authors, (_Rynchites Bacchus_ and _Eumolpus Vitis_,) devour the young shoots, the foliage and the footstalks of the fruit, so that the latter is prevented from coming to maturity[352]; and a third (_C. Corruptor_, Host,) by a German, which seems closely allied to _Otiorhynchus? picipes_ before mentioned, if it be not the same insect. This destroys the young vines, often killing them the first year; and is accounted so terrible an enemy to them, that not only the animals but even their eggs are searched for and destroyed, and to forward this work people often call in the assistance of their neighbours[353].--In the Crimea the small caterpillar of a _Procris_ or _Ino_ (lepidopterous genera separated from _Sphinx_, L.) related to _I. Statices_, is a still more destructive enemy. As soon as the buds open in the spring, it eats its way into them, especially the fruit buds, and devours the germ of the grape. Two or three of these caterpillars will so injure a vine, by creeping from one germ to another, that it will bear no fruit nor produce a single regular shoot the succeeding year[354].--Vine leaves in France are also frequently destroyed by the larva of a moth (_Tortrix vitana_); in Germany another species does great injury to the young bunches, preventing their expansion by the webs in which it involves them[355]; and a third (_Tortrix fasciana_) makes the grapes themselves its food: a similar insect is alluded to in the threat contained in Deuteronomy[356].--The worst pest of the vine in this country is its Coccus (_C. Vitis_). This animal, which fortunately is not sufficiently hardy to endure the common temperature of our atmosphere, sometimes so abounds upon those that are cultivated in stoves and greenhouses, that their stems seem quite covered with little locks of white cotton; which appearance is caused by a filamentous secretion transpiring through the skin of the animal, in which they envelop their eggs. Where they prevail they do great injury to the plant by subtracting the sap from its foliage and fruit, and causing it to bleed.--And to close the list, you are perfectly aware of the eagerness with which wasps, flies, and other insects, attack the grapes when ripe, often leaving nothing but the mere skin for their lordly proprietor.

There are some of these creatures that attack indiscriminately all fruit-trees. One of these is the _Cicada septendecim_, (so called because, according to Kalm, it appears only once in seventeen years[357].) The female oviposits in the pith of the twigs of trees, where the grubs are hatched, and do infinite damage both to fruit- and forest-trees[358].--Another, the caterpillar of the butterfly of the hawthorn, (_Pieris Cratægi_) which in 1791, in some parts of Germany, stripped the fruit-trees in general of their foliage[359].--In France also in 1731 and 1732 that of a moth which seems related to the brown-tail moth (_Arctia phæorhœa_), whose history has been given by the late Mr. Curtis, was so numerous as to occasion a general alarm. The oaks, elms, and white-thorn hedges looked as if some burning wind had passed over them and dried up their leaves; for, the insect devouring only one surface of them, that which is left becomes brown and dry. They also laid waste the fruit-trees, and even devoured the fruit; so that the parliament published an edict to compel people to collect and destroy them; but this would in a great measure have been ineffectual, had not some cold rains fallen, which so completely annihilated them, that it was difficult to meet with a single individual[360].

If we quit the orchard and fruit-garden for a walk in our _plantations_ and _groves_, we shall still be forced to witness the sad effects of insect devastation; and when we see, as sometimes happens, the hedges and trees entirely deprived of their foliage, and ourselves of the shade we love from the fervid beam of the noon-day sun; when the singing birds have deserted them; and all their music, which has so often enchanted us by its melody, variety, and sweetness, has ceased--we shall be tempted in our hearts to wish the whole insect race was blotted from the page of creation. Numerous are the agents employed in this work of destruction. Amongst the beetles, various cockchafers (_Melolontha vulgaris_, _Amphimalla solstitialis_, and _Phyllopertha horticola_) in their perfect state act as conspicuous a part in injuring the trees, as their grubs do in destroying the herbage. Besides the leaves of fruit-trees, they devour those of the sycamore, the lime, the beech, the willow, and the elm. They are sometimes, especially the common one, astonishingly numerous. Mouffet relates (but one would think that there must be some mistake in the date, since they are never so early in their appearance,) that on the 24th of February 1574 such a number of them fell into the river Severn as to stop the wheels of the water-mills[361]. It is also recorded in the _Philosophical Transactions_, that in 1688 they filled the hedges and trees of part of the county of Galway in such infinite numbers, as to cling to each other in clusters like bees when they swarm; on the wing they darkened the air, and produced a sound like that of distant drums. When they were feeding, the noise of their jaws might be mistaken for the sawing of timber. Travellers and people abroad were very much annoyed by their continual flying in their faces; and in a short time the leaves of all the trees for some miles round were so totally consumed by them, that at Midsummer the country wore the aspect of the depth of winter[362].

But the criminals to whom it is principally owing that our groves are sometimes stripped of the green robe of summer, are the various tribes of _Lepidoptera_, especially the night-fliers or moths, myriads of whose caterpillars, in certain seasons, despoil whole districts of their beauty, and our walks of all their pleasure. In 1731 the oaks in France were terribly devastated by the larva of _Hypogymna dispar_[363], and in 1797 many of the pine forests about Bayreuth suffered a similar injury from that of _H. Monacha_[364]. Those of Germany are also sometimes laid waste by the caterpillar of a beautiful moth belonging to the _Noctuidæ_ (_Achatea spreta_[365]), which has been taken in England. _Cheimatobia brumata_ is likewise a fearful enemy to the foliage of almost every kind of tree[366]. The woods in certain provinces of North America are in some years entirely stripped by that of another moth, which eats all kinds of leaves. This happening at a time of the year when the heat is most excessive is attended by fatal consequences. For, being deprived of the shelter of their foliage, whole forests are sometimes entirely dried up and ruined[367].--The brown-tail moth, before alluded to, which occasionally bares our hawthorn hedges, has been rendered famous by the alarm it caused to the inhabitants of the vicinity of the metropolis in 1782, when rewards were offered for collecting the caterpillars, and the churchwardens and overseers of the parishes attended to see them burnt by bushels.--You may have observed perhaps in some cabinets of foreign insects an ant, the head of which is very large in proportion to the size of its body, with a piece of leaf in its mouth many times bigger than itself. These ants, called in Tobago parasol ants (_Œcodoma cephalotes_), cut circular pieces out of the leaves of various trees and plants, which they carry in their jaws to their nests, and they will strip a tree of its leaves in a night, a circumstance which has been confirmed to me by Captain Hancock[368]. Stedman mentions another very large ant, being at least an inch in length, which has the same instinct. It was a pleasant spectacle, he observes, to behold this army of ants marching constantly in the same direction, and each individual with its bit of green leaf in its mouth[369]. The injury thus caused to trees by insects is not confined to the mere loss of their leaves for one season; for it occasions them to draw upon the funds of another, by sending forth premature shoots and making gems unfold, that, in the ordinary course, would not have put forth their foliage till the following year.

Other insects, though they do not entirely devour the leaves of trees and plants, yet considerably diminish their beauty. Thus, for instance, sometimes the subcutaneous larvæ undermine them, when the leaf exhibits the whole course of their labyrinth in a pallid, tortuous, gradually dilating line--at others the Tortrices disfigure them by rolling them up, or the leaf-cutter bees by taking a piece out of them, or certain Tineæ again by eating their under surface, and so causing them to wither either partially or totally. You have doubtless observed what is called the honey-dew upon the maple and other trees, concerning which the learned Roman naturalist Pliny gravely hesitates whether he shall call it the sweat of the heavens, the saliva of the stars, or a liquid produced by the purgation of the air[370]!! Perhaps you may not be aware that it is a secretion of Aphides, whose excrement has the privilege of emulating sugar and honey in sweetness and purity. It however often tarnishes the lustre of those trees in which these insects are numerous, and is the lure that attracts the swarms of ants which you may often see travelling up and down the trunk of the oak and other trees. The larch in particular is inhabited by an Aphis transpiring a waxy substance like filaments of cotton: this is sometimes so infinitely multiplied upon it as to whiten the whole tree, which often perishes in consequence of its attack. The beech is infested by a similar one. Some animals also of this genus inhabiting the poplar, elm, lime, and willow, reside in galls they have produced, that disfigure the leaves or their footstalks. Perhaps those resembling fruit, or flowers, or moss, produced by the Aphis of the fir (_Aphis Abietis_), the different species of gall-gnats (_Cecidomyia_), or occasioned by the puncture and oviposition of the various kinds of gall-flies (_Cynips_), may be regarded rather as an ornament than as an injury to a tree or shrub; yet when too numerous they must deprive it of its proper nutriment, and so occasion some defect. And probably the enormous wens, and other monstrosities and deformities observable in trees, may have been originally produced by the bite or incision of insects.

Besides exterior insect enemies, living trees are liable to the ravages of many that are _interior_. The caterpillar of the great goat-moth (_Cossus ligniperda_[371]), of the hornet hawk-moth (_Sesia crabroniformis_, F.), and of two beetles (_Nitidula grisea_, and _Cryptorhynchus Lapathi_), devour the wood of the willow and sallow, which thus in time often become so hollow as to be easily blown down. The bee hawk-moth (_Sesia apiformis_[372]), and probably _Rynchites Populi_, a brilliant green weevil, feeds upon the poplar--_Prionus coriarius_ is sometimes found in the oak and sometimes in the elm, and _Hylurgus piniperda_[373], in the Scotch fir. Mr. Stephens informs me that the fir-trees in a plantation of Mr. Foljambe's in Yorkshire were destroyed by a hymenopterous insect (_Sirex Gigas_), while those of another belonging to the same gentleman in Wiltshire met with a similar fate from the attack of _Sirex Juvencus_. The elm also suffers dreadfully from the attack of another minute beetle (_Scolytus destructor_), related to the last[374].--When the sap flows from wounds in a tree it is attended by various other beetles, (I have observed _Cetonia aurata_, and several _Nitidulæ_ and _Brachyptera_ busy in this way,) which prevent it from healing so soon as it would otherwise do; and if the bark be any where separated from the wood, a numerous army of wood-lice, earwigs, spiders, field-bugs, and similar _subcortical_ insects take their station there and prevent a re-union.

The mischief however produced by any or all of these, is not to be compared with that sometimes sustained in Germany from the attacks of a small beetle, (_Bostrichus Typographus_) so called on account of a fancied resemblance between the paths it erodes and letters, which bores into the fir. This insect, in its preparatory state, feeds upon the soft inner bark only: but it attacks this important part in such vast numbers, 80,000 being sometimes found in a single tree, that it is infinitely more noxious than any of those that bore into the wood: and such is its vitality, that though the bark be battered and the tree plunged into water, or laid upon the ice or snow, it remains alive and unhurt. The leaves of the trees infested by these insects first become yellow, the trees themselves then die at the top, and soon entirely perish. Their ravages have long been known in Germany under the name of _Wurm trökniss_ (decay caused by worms); and in the old liturgies of that country the animal itself is formally mentioned under its vulgar appellation, "The Turk." This pest was particularly prevalent and caused incalculable mischief about the year 1665. In the beginning of the last century it again showed itself in the Hartz forests--it reappeared in 1757, redoubled its injuries in 1769, and arrived at its height in 1783, when the number of trees destroyed by it in the above forests alone, was calculated at a million and a half, and the inhabitants were threatened with a total suspension of the working of their mines, and consequent ruin. At this period these Bostrichi, when arrived at their perfect state, migrated in swarms like bees into Suabia and Franconia. At length, between the years 1784 and 1789, in consequence of a succession of cold and moist seasons, the numbers of this scourge were sensibly diminished. It appeared again however in 1790, and so late as 1796 there was great reason to fear for the few fir-trees that were left[375].

The seeds of forest- as well as of fruit-trees are doubtless subject to injuries from the same quarter, but these being more out of the reach of observation, have not been much noticed. Acorns, however, a considerable article with nurserymen, are said to have both a moth and a beetle that prey upon them; and what is remarkable, though sometimes one larva of each is found in the same acorn, yet two of either kind are never to be met with together[376]. The beetle is probably the _Curculio Glandium_ (_Balaninus_) of Mr. Marsham, and is nearly related to the species whose grub inhabits the nut.

Having now conducted you round and exhibited to you the melancholy proofs of the universal dominion of insects over our vegetable treasures, while growing or endued with the principle of vitality, in their separate departments,--I must next introduce you to a pest worse than all put together, which indiscriminately attacks and destroys every vegetable substance that the earth produces, and which, wherever it prevails, carries famine, pestilence and death in its train. Happily for this country--and we cannot be too thankful for the privilege, we know this scourge of nations only by report. The name of _Locust_, which has been such a sound of horror in other countries, here only suggests an object of interesting inquiry. But the ravages of locusts are so copious a theme that they merit to be considered in a separate letter.

I am, &c.

FOOTNOTES:

[270] _Linn. Trans._ ix. 156-61.

[271] Germar's _Mag. der Ent._ i. 1-10. Mr. Stephens, in his _Illustrations of British Entomology_ (No. I. p. 4.), very judiciously asks, "May not these herbivorous larvæ have been the principal cause of the mischief to the wheat, while those of the _Zabrus_ contributed rather to lessen their numbers than to destroy the corn." But this query does not account for their being found, when in the perfect state, attacking the ear. I have seen cognate beetles devouring the seeds of umbelliferous plants.

[272] _Act. Stockh._ 1778. 3. n. 11. and 4. n. 4. Marsham in _Linn. Trans._ ii. 79.

[273] _Linn. Trans._ ii. 76-80.

[274] _Encyclopæd. Britann._ viii. 480-95.

[275] Young's _Annals of Agriculture_, xi. 471.

[276] _Tipula Tritici_, K., belonging to Latreille's genus _Cecidomyia_. (See above, p. 28. note^a.) Marsham and Kirby in _Linn. Trans._ iii. 242-5. iv. 225-39. v. 96-110.

[277] Oliv. ii. n. 19. 3-4.

[278] _Curculio testaceus_, _Ent. Brit._

[279] Marsham in _Linn. Trans._ ii. 80. De Geer notices the injury done by this fly to rye, and observes that before it had been attributed to frost. ii. 68.

[280] _Act. Stockh._ 1750. 128. Reaum. ii. 480, &c.

[281] This insect was taken in maize by Mr. Sparshall of Norwich.

[282] Smith's Abbott's _Insects of Georgia_, 191.

[283] I say this upon the authority of Mr. Wolnough of Hollesley (late of Boyton) in Suffolk, an intelligent agriculturist, and a most acute and accurate observer of nature.

[284] Reaum. vi. 566.

[285] Kalm's _Travels_, i. 173.

[286] Amoreux, 288.

[287] I have raised plants from this seed, which appear from the foliage to belong either to _Phaseolus_ or _Dolichos_.

[288] Markwick, Marsham and Lehmann in _Linn. Trans._ vi. 142-. and Kirby in ditto, ix. 37. 42. n. 19. 23.

[289] PLATE XVII. FIG. 12.

[290] _Philos. Trans._ 1741. 581.

[291] De Geer, ii. 341. _Amœn. Acad._ iii. 355.

[292] _Farmer's Mag._ iii. 487.

[293] Pallas's _Travels in South Russia_, i. 30.

[294] PLATE XVIII. FIG. 4.

[295] Marsham in _Communications to the Board of Agriculture_, iv. 412. _Plate_ xviii. _fig_. 4. and _Linn. Trans._ ix. 60.

[296] PLATE XXIV. FIG. 3.

[297] The wire-worm is particularly destructive for a few years in gardens recently converted from pasture ground. In the Botanic Garden at Hull thus circumstanced a great proportion of the annuals sown in 1813 were destroyed by it. A very simple and effectual remedy in such cases was mentioned to me by Sir Joseph Banks. He recommended that slices of potato stuck upon skewers should be buried near the seeds sown, examined every day, and the wire-worms which collect upon them in great numbers destroyed.

This plan of decoying destructive animals from our crops by offering them more tempting food, is excellent, and deserves to be pursued in other instances. It was very successfully employed in 1813 by J. M. Rodwell, Esq. of Barham Hall near Ipswich, one of the most skilful and best informed agriculturists in the county of Suffolk, to preserve some of his wheat-fields from the ravages of a small gray slug, which threatened to demolish the plant. Having heard that turnips had been used with success to entice the slugs from wheat, he caused a sufficient quantity to dress eight acres to be got together; and then, the tops being divided and the apples sliced, he directed the pieces to be laid separately, dressing two stetches with them and omitting two alternately, till the whole field of eight acres was gone over. On the following morning he employed two women to examine and free from the slugs, which they did into a measure, the tops and slices; and when cleared they were laid upon those stetches that had been omitted the day before. It was observed invariably, that in the stetches dressed with the turnips no slugs were to be found upon the wheat or crawling upon the land, though they abounded upon the turnips; while on the undressed stetches they were to be seen in great numbers both on the wheat and on the land. The quantity of slugs thus collected was near a bushel.--Mr. Rodwell is persuaded that by this plan he saved his wheat from essential injury.

[298] Reaum. v. 11.

[299] Two species are confounded under the appellation of _the grub_, the larvæ namely of _Tipula oleracea_ and _cornicina_, which last is very injurious, though not equally with the first. In the rich district of _Sunk Island_ in Holderness, in the spring of 1813, hundreds of acres of pasture have been entirely destroyed by them, being rendered as completely brown as if they had suffered a three months drought, and destitute of all vegetation except that of a few thistles. A square foot of the dead turf being dug up, 210 grubs were counted in it! and, what furnishes a striking proof of the prolific powers of these insects, the next year it was difficult to find a single one.

[300] Stickney's _Observations on the Grub_.

[301] De Geer, i. 487.

[302] I owe this information to the late Robinson Kittoe, Esq.

[303] Castle in _Philos. Trans._ xxx. 346.

[304] Browne's _Civil and Nat. Hist. of Jamaica_, 430.

[305] _Essai sur la Géographie des Plantes_, 136.

[306] M'Kinnen, 171. Browne _ubi supr._ Merian, _Ins. Sur._ 10.

[307] Smith's Abbott's _Insects of Georgia_, 199.

[308] Illiger, _Mag._ i. 256.

[309] The farmers would do well to change the name of this insect from _turnip-fly_ to _turnip-flea_, since from its diminutive size and activity in leaping the latter name is much the most proper. The term, _the fly_, might with propriety be restricted to the Hop-aphis.

[310] Young's _Annals of Agriculture_, vii. 102.

[311] Marshall in _Philos. Trans._ lxxiii. 1783.

[312] See above, p. 167-168.

[313] Swamm. ii. 81. _col._ b.--Gyllenhal in describing the last-named species, so common on the flowers of siliquose plants (_Insecta Suecica_, iii. 142.), asks if his _R. sulcicollis_ (_C. Pleurostigma_, E. B.), which agrees with it in most respects, except in having toothed thighs, be not the other sex? This query I can solve in the negative, having taken the sexes of _R. assimilis_ in coitu, which do not differ, save that the male has a somewhat shorter rostrum.

[314] Spence's _Observations on the Disease in Turnips called Fingers and Toes._ Hull 1812. 8vo.

[315] Reaum. ii. 471.

[316] See above, p. 29.

[317] De Geer, ii. 440. In the summer of 1826 when at Brussels, I observed that delicious vegetable of the _cabbage_ tribe so largely cultivated there under the name of _Jets de choux_, and which in England we call _Brussels sprouts_, to be materially injured in the later stages of its growth by the attacks of the _turnip-flea_, and other little beetles of the same genus (_Haltica_), which were so numerous and so universally prevalent, that I scarcely ever examined a full-grown plant from which a vast number might not have been collected. Some plants were almost black with them, the species most abundant being of a dark æneous tinge. They had not merely eroded the cuticle in various parts, so as to give the leaves a brown blistered appearance, but had also eaten them into large holes, at the margin of which I often saw them in the act of gnawing; and the stunted and unhealthy appearance of the plants sufficiently indicated the injurious effect of this interruption of the proper office of the sap. What was particularly remarkable, considering the locomotive powers of these insects, was that the young turnips, sown in August after the wheat and rye, close to acres of Brussels sprouts, (which all round Brussels are planted in the open fields among other crops,) infested by myriads of these insects, were not more eaten by them than they usually are in England, and produced good average crops. It would seem, agreeably to a fact already mentioned, (see Vol. I. 4th Edit. p. 389,) that they prefer the taste of leaves to which they have been accustomed, to younger plants of the same natural family; and hence perhaps the previous sowing of a crop of cabbage-plants in the corner of a field meant for turnips, might allure and keep there the great bulk of these insects present in the vicinity, until the turnips were out of danger.

[318] Perhaps this fly is the same which Linné confounded with _Tachina Larvarum_, which he says he had found in the roots of the cabbage (_Syst. Nat._ 992. 78.) I say "_confounded_," because it is not likely that the same species should be parasitic in an insect, and also inhabit a vegetable.

[319] In lately examining, however, some young garden peas and beans about four inches high, I observed the margins of the leaves to be gnawed into deep scollops by a little weevil (_Sitona lineata_), of which I found from two to eight on each pea and bean, and many in the act of eating. Not only were the larger leaves of every plant thus eroded, but in many cases the terminal young shoots and leaves were apparently irreparably injured. I have often noticed this and another of the short-snouted Curculios (_S. tibialis_) in great abundance in pea and bean fields, but was not aware till now that either of them was injurious to these plants. Probably both are so, but whether the crop is materially affected by them must be left to further inquiry.

[320] Reaum. ii. 479.

[321] Description of _S. Ceparum_.--Cinereous, clothed with distant black hairs, proceeding, particularly on the thorax, from a black point. Legs nigrescent. Back of the abdomen of the male with an interrupted black vitta down the middle. Wings immaculate. Poisers and alulæ pale yellow. Length 3-1/2 lines.

[322] Barton in _Philos. Magaz._ ix. 62.

[323] Reaum. ii. 337.

[324] _Apis._ **. c. 2. α. K.

[325] Reaum. iv. 499.

[326] Rai. _Hist. Ins._ Prolegom. xi.

[327] This kind of misnomer frequently occurs in entomological authors.--Thus, for instance, the _Curculio (Rynchites) Alliariæ_ of Linné feeds upon the hawthorn, and _Curculio (Cryptorhynchus) Lapathi_ upon the willow (Curtis in _Linn. Trans._ i. 86.); but as _Alliaria_ is common in hawthorn hedges, and docks often grow under willows, the mistake in question easily happened: when, however, such mistakes are discovered, the _Trivial Name_ ought certainly to be altered.

[328] I consider this insect as the type of a new subgenus (_Phyllopertha_, K. MS.), which connects those tribes of _Melolontha_, F. that have a mesosternal prominence with those that have not. Of this subgenus I possess six species. It is clearly distinct from _Anisoplia_, under which DeJean arranges it.

[329] _Wiener Verzeich._ 8vo. 29.

[330] Fabricius seems to have regarded the saw-fly that feeds upon the _sallow_ (_Nematus Capreæ_), not only as synonymous with that which feeds upon the _osier_, but also with our little assailant of the _gooseberry_ and _currant_. Yet it is very evident from Reaumur's account, whose accuracy may be depended upon, that they are all distinct species. Fabricius's description of the _fly_ agrees with the insect of the gooseberry, but that which he has given of the _larva_ belongs to the animal inhabiting the sallow. Probably, confounding the two species, he described the imago from the insect of the former, and the larva (if he did not copy from Reaumur or Linné) from that of the latter. Linné was correct in regarding Reaumur's three insects as distinct species, though he appears to be mistaken in referring to him under _N. flavus_, as the saw-fly of the currant and gooseberry is not wholly yellow.

[331] Peck's _Nat. Hist. of the Slug-worm_, 9.

[332] _Trost Kleiner Beytrag_. 38.

[333] Reaum. ii. 477.

[334] _On the Apple and Pear_, 158. The beetle Mr. Knight alludes to is probably the _Polydrosus oblongus_, which answers his description, and is common on pear-trees.--In Holland, it is stated in a little tract on this subject (_Verhandeling ten bewijze &c. door_ F. H. van Berck. 8vo. Haarlem 1807), that the great destroyer of the blossoms of their apple- and pear-trees is the larva of another weevil, _Anthonomus Pomorum_, which from the name and Gyllenhal's addition to the habitat given by Linné--"quas destruit"--should seem to be injurious in Sweden also.

[335] Reaum. _ubi supr._ 475.

[336] _On Fruit Trees_, 271.

[337] _On the Apple and Pear_, 45.

[338] Reaum. ii. 499.

[339] Mr. Scales.

[340] See Observations on this Insect in the 2nd volume of the _Horticultural Society's Transactions_, p. 25. By W. Spence.

[341] Reaum. iv. 69. _t._ 5. _f._ 6, 7.

[342] A solution of quick-lime is recommended in the _Gardener's Magazine for January_ 1828, a periodical work which every friend of Horticulture ought to possess.

[343] This Aphis is evidently the insect described in Illiger's _Magazin_, i. 450. under the name of _A. lanigera_, as having done great injury to the apple-trees in the neighbourhood of Bremen in 1801. That it is an Aphis and no Coccus is clear from its _oral_ rostrum and the wings of the male, of which Sir Joseph Banks possesses an admirable drawing by Mr. Bauer. On this Aphis see Forsyth, 265; _Monthly Mag._ xxxii. 320; and also for August 1811; and Sir Joseph Banks in the _Horticultural Society's Transactions_, ii. 162. Those Aphides that transpire a cottony excretion are now considered as belonging to a distinct genus, under the name of _Myzoxyla_.

[344] M. de la Hire in Reaum. ii. 478.

[345] Dr. Smith Barton's Letter in _Philos. Magaz._ xxii. 210. William Davy, Esq. American Consul of the Port of Hull, long resident in the United States, informed me that though he had abundance of peaches at his country-house, German Town near Philadelphia, he could never succeed with the nectarine, the fruit constantly falling off perforated by the grub of some insect.

[346] _Descr. of the I. of St. Helena_, 147.

[347] A mode of destroying this hurtful insect is given in a Number of that useful and interesting work, the _Gardener's Magazine_, just quoted.

[348] Reaum. ii. 505.

[349] Ibid. ii. 507. and Hasselquist's _Travels in the Levant_, 428.

[350] That is "High and Low," Judges ix. 13.

[351] Sturm _Deutschlands Fauna_, i. 5.

[352] Latreille, _Hist. Nat._ xi. 66. 331.

[353] Host in Jacquin. _Collect._ iii. 297.

[354] Pallas's _Travels in S. Russia_, ii. 241.

[355] Jacquin. _Collect._ ii. 97.

[356] Deut. xxviii. 39.

[357] _Travels_, ii. 6.

[358] Collinson in _Philos. Trans._ liv. x. 65.

[359] Rösel, I. ii. 15.

[360] Reaum. ii. 122.

[361] Mouffet, 160.

[362] _Philos. Trans._ xix. 741.

[363] Reaum. i. 387. These larvæ were so extremely numerous in 1826 on the limes of the _Allée Verte_ at Brussels, that many of the trees of that noble avenue, though of great age, were nearly deprived of their leaves, and afforded little of the shade which the unusual heat of the summer so urgently required. The moths which in autumn proceeded from them, when in motion towards night, swarmed like bees, and subsequently on the trunk of every tree might be seen scores of females depositing their down-covered patch of eggs. In the _Park_ they were also very abundant; and it may be safely asserted that if one half of the eggs deposited were to be hatched, in 1827 scarcely a leaf would remain in either of these favourite places of public resort. Happily, however, this calamity seems likely to be prevented. Of the vast number of patches of eggs which I saw on almost every tree in the park about the end of September, I could two months afterwards to my no small surprise, discover scarcely one, though the singularity of the fact made me examine closely. For their disappearance I have no doubt the inhabitants of Brussels are indebted to the tit-mouse (_Parus_), the tree-creeper (_Certhia familiaris_), and other small birds known to derive part of their food from the eggs of insects, and which abound in the park, where they may be often seen running up and down the trunks of the trees, at once providing their own food and rendering a service to man, which all his powers would be inadequate completely to effect.

Reaumur (ii. 106) in certain seasons found these patches of eggs so numerous, that in the _Bois de Boulogne_ there was scarcely an oak, the under side of the branches of which were not covered by them for an extent of seven or eight feet. He informs us that the eggs are not hatched till the following spring.

[364] _Wiener Verzeich._ 8vo. 75.

[365] Curtis _Brit. Ent._ _t_. 117.

[366] De Geer, ii. 452.

[367] Kalm's _Travels_, ii. 7.

[368] The same intelligent gentleman related to me, that a person having taken some land at Bahia in the Brazils, he was compelled by these ants, which were so numerous as to render every effort to destroy them ineffectual, to relinquish the occupation of it. Their nests were excavated to the astonishing depth of fourteen feet. Merian _Insect. Sur._ 18. Smeathman on _Termites, Phil. Trans._ lxxi. 39. note 35.

[369] Stedman, ii. 142.

[370] _Hist. Nat._ l. xi. c. 12.

[371] Curtis _Brit. Ent._ t. 60.

[372] Lewin in _Linn. Trans._ iii. 1.--Curtis in do. i. 86.

[373] Curtis _Brit. Ent._ _t._ 104.

[374] MacLeay in _Edinburgh Philos. Journ._ n. xxi. 123. Curtis _Brit. Ent._ _t._ 43.

[375] Wilhelm's _Recreations from Nat. Hist._ quoted by Latreille _Hist. Nat._ xi. 194.

[376] Reaum. ii. 502.