Page:A Treatise on the Culture of the Vine and, and the Art of Making Wine.pdf/155

 Different means, in different parts of the world, are employed, to prevent the attacks of various sorts of insects. The method recommended by Cato, (de re rustica) is still practised throughout Greece. It consists in surrounding the stock with a mixture of pitch, sulphur, and oil. The proprietors of the vineyards of Constantia, employ a means which serves to shew the minute care which their valuable produce will allow to be lavished upon them. This is, to suspend a bunch of vine leaves, dipt in brandy, below each bunch of grapes.

Those injuries which the roots may sustain from grubs, admit of several means of prevention.

The grubs are always to be found at a certain depth in the soil, where they bury themselves, to escape equally from the heat and the cold. If, during the winter, the ground is dug up, many of them are sure to perish. Their preference for leguminous plants, is also taken advantage of for their destruction. A row of these is sown between the rows of vines, and when their sickly state shew that the grubs have assembled at their roots, they are dug up and thus destroyed. During the winter too, they are collected by the heat