Page:Scientific Memoirs, Vol. 1 (1837).djvu/215

 but pear and apple trees arc more exposed to their attacks than the vine, and they are more prejudicial in Germany and the South than in our climates.

The Eumolpus of the vine, vulgarly called the Coupe-bourgeon, is a third species of the Coleoptera still more destructive than the two which we have just mentioned; but this insect, of which we shall presently treat more at length, like the two preceding ones, possesses but little brilliancy of colour.

It appears then that among all the Coleoptera or Scarabæi which infest the vine, there are only two species closely allied, and which must have been considered as one by the ancients, as they have long been by the moderns, which appear to correspond by their colour to the particulars which we have obtained in our examination of the ancient texts relative to the word Cantharis. These two species are the Rhynchites Betuleti and the Rhynchites Bacchus of modern naturalists; the Attelabus of the vine, or Attelabus Bacchus, and the Attelabus of the birch, of their predecessors. These two species, considered as one by the vine-dressers, have received from them in the different dialects and provinces of France, and even in the different districts of the same province, the names of Becmare, Urbec, Urbère or Urbée, Diableau, Beche, Lisette, Velours vert, Destraux, and perhaps others of which we are ignorant. The Rhynchites Betuleti is of a brilliant silky green colour, or of an equally brilliant and silky violet blue. The Rhynchites Bacchus is of a golden violet purple or of a golden green mixed with purple. These insects cut the petioles of the leaves to cause them to wither and soften so as to allow of their being rolled with greater facility; this they effect with great dexterity, leaving a cavity in which they place their eggs, and thus injure greatly the plants to which they attach themselves. The Rhynchites Bacchus prefers the leaves of the vine and cherry tree; the ''Rhynch. Betuleti'' those of the vine and the white birch. In the environs of Paris I have most frequently found the R. Bacchus upon the vine; but it was the R. Betuleti which committed the extensive ravages among the vines of Burgundy about fifteen years ago. M. Silbermann told me, at Strasburg, that the R. Betuleti is more destructive than any other insect to the vines of Alsace and the banks of the Rhine, and that the R. Bacchus is seldom found there. According to the observations of this able entomologist, the R. Betuleti is