Page:Scientific Memoirs, Vol. 1 (1837).djvu/216

 seen in that country as a perfect insect upon the leaves of the vine towards the end of August. The larva rolls the leaf to hide itself, and attacks the young grape, but not the buds, being hatched too late. Schranck, in his Fauna Boïca, has placed these two insects in a particular genus, to which he gives the name of Involvulus; but the Involvulus of the ancients, as we shall presently show, does not belong to the class Coleoptera, but to the Lepidoptera; and I may remark that the genus Involvulus of Schranck, being badly constituted, has not been adopted by any naturalist. Though it contains but few species, some of them are distributed by M. Schœnherr among his Apoderi, one among his Attelabi, and a third among his Rhynchites. Aldrovandus was well acquainted with the Rhynchites Bacchus; and I am surprised that no naturalist has quoted this venerable father of natural history in modern Europe upon the subject of this small but formidable insect. He places it among the Cantharides, to which he devotes a chapter, thus separating them from the true Scarabæi which occupy another chapter. The following is the description which he gives of this Curculio: "Nonus numerus significat Convolvulum,  Græcis, Tagliadizzo vulgo apud Italos agricolas, corpore cæruleo, pedibus obscure lutescentibus, in vite repertum, ac folia ejus depopulantem. Nascitur ex oris bombicum ovis similibus magnitudine, colore rubicundis. Hic cum parere vult multa cumulat convolvitque folia (unde forte a Latinis id nominis datum), atque in his sua ova reponit." Thus the name of Tagliadizzo,—cutter,—given to it by the vine-dressere of Italy; its bluish colours; the injury done to the leaves of the vine, which the insect rolls up and in which it deposits its eggs, all mark with certainty the synonymy of our Rhynchites Betuleti or R. Bacchus with the ninth Cantharis of Aldrovandus. But as to the identity of this insect with the Ips of the Greeks, and the Convolvulus of the Latin authors, which Aldrovandus attempts to establish, the continuation of our researches will prove that it must be rejected.

VII. Ips.—Iks.—Volucra.—Volvox.—Eumolpus Vitis.—Eumolpus of the Vine.—Coupe-bourgeons.—Tête-cache.—Bêche.—Lisette.—Gribouris de la Vigne—After having treated of the Cantharides, Aldrovandus devotes an entire chapter to the Ips of the Greeks, to confirm his assertion in the preceding chapter that this insect is the Tagliadizzo of the cultivators of Italy; but he remarks that he had only found this insect upon the vine, though the ancient authors say that it preys also upon horn. If Aldrovandus was wrong in maintaining that the Ips of the Greeks was the Convolvulus of the Latins, he was right in thinking that it belonged to the Coleoptera, and was one of those which the Italian agriculturists class among the Tagliadizzi, or cutters.