Page:Scientific Memoirs, Vol. 1 (1837).djvu/213

 There is in particular one species which has a deeply excavated corselet raised at the back like a saddle; this corselet hides the sonorous and vaulted elytra, which are very short, and do not serve for flying. These locusts resemble nymphæ, but have however arrived at their perfect state, and propagate their kind. This species has been named the Locusta ephippiger. There are even other species of which the females at least are without wings or elytra, and which perfectly resemble the larva of the Locust; such are the species named Locusta aptera and Locusta Puppa by Fabricius. But I am more inclined to consider the Saddle-locust, or the Locusta ephippiger, as the Gaza of the Bible, than either of the two other species that I have mentioned. Of all the species of creeping locusts the ephippiger is that which I have most frequently found upon the vine, though never in sufficient abundance to produce much injury; and it cannot be classed with the true insects of the vine, neither is it mentioned as such in Scripture.

VI. Cantharis of the Geoponics.—Ninth Cantharis of Aldrovandus.—Rhynchites Bacchus, or Rhynchites Betuleti, or Attelabus of the Vine.—Becmar-Diableau.—Lisette, and Green Velvet (Velours vert) of the Vine-dressers.—The Coleoptera or Scarabæi which destroy the Vine, and do not answer to the Cantharides of the Geoponics.—Lethrus Cephalotes.—Gray Curculiones (Charansons).—The ancient authors give the name of Cantharis to the insects which they employed when pounded as an ingredient of the liniment or unguent with which they anointed the vine to protect it from injurious insects; but it is in the Geoponics alone, when treating of this employment of Cantharides, that we are informed that these insects were engendered in the vine, and were destructive to it; and the author or authors of this compilation only give the recipe of Cantharides macerated in oil as a remedy for the disasters which these insects themselves produce. We have seen that the word Cantharis was employed by the Greeks, as well as by the Latins, as the designation of the Coleoptera or Scarabæi in general; that this name was often applied to the brilliantly-coloured Coleoptera, or those possessing corrosive or vesicating properties; and that it was also used as the name of insects, whether of large or small dimensions, which were rendered remarkable by their destructive effects. Of the first we have noticed the Mylabris of the endive, the Mylabris Cichorri of modern naturalists, so well described by Dioscorides; and the Lytta or Meloë vesicatoria, the Cantharides of our apothecaries. Among the second, or those which are very small, is the Scarabæus parvus Cantharis dictus of Pliny which infests corn, which is the Curculio