Page:Scientific Memoirs, Vol. 1 (1837).djvu/218

 certainly the insect designated by the ancients as preying on horn and meat cannot be the same as that whose worm or larva feeds upon the young shoots of the vine. However, to render the same name applicable to them both, they must have belonged to the class Coleoptera, the larvæ of which could not be confounded with caterpillars, or the larvæ of Lepidoptera; the perfect insect which destroys the shoots of the vine must also resemble the Dermestes in form and dimensions. All these conditions meet in the Eumolpus Vitis, the Eumolpus of the vine of modern naturalists, which is one of the greatest scourges of that plant. This insect, which is of a black and blood-red colour, belongs to a genus which has been separated from the Cryptocephali, and is vulgarly known under the names of the Cryptocephalus (Gribouris) of the vine, Bêche, Lisette, and Tête-cache, because its head is covered by its corselet. It feeds upon the buds of the vine, or on the young shoots of that plant which still remain herbaceous, which it cuts in two and causes entirely to perish. It feeds also upon grapes. The great injuries inflicted by this insect upon the vine is an additional reason for considering it as the Ips of the ancients. As Strabo observes, we can imagine that the veneration in which the memory of Hercules was held in a country planted with the vine was more on account of his supposed destruction of this plague than of his victory over the Nemæan lion, and why the cultivators were so anxious to obtain and employ recipes for the destruction of these vermin. When the ancients spoke of the Ips or Iks as a worm which appeared in the spring, they had in view the larva of the Eumolpus of the vine. The larva of this insect is oval; it has six feet; its head is scaly and armed with two small maxillæ. The insect named Ips or Iks by the Greeks, was called Volucra or Volvox by the Latins; but with this difference, that the word Ips and Iks were applied to the larva of this insect, while Volucra and Volvox were the names of the perfect insect. This is proved by the use of the word animal, and not vermis, which Pliny and Columella employ when speaking of the Volucra or Volvox; while the Ips is always spoken of as a worm by the Greeks. The name Volucra has probably been given to these larvæ in consequence of the promptitude with which they escape from the hand which endeavours to seize them, for they drop down upon the earth as soon as the leaf in which they are enveloped is touched; and the name Volvox is undoubtedly derived from this insect's habit of rolling itself up in leaves. Forcellini, in his dictionary, gives the Italian word Ritoritelli as the equivalent of the word Volucra; this vulgar name of an insect of the vine in Italy has evidently the same origin as Volvox. Nearly all the insects of the genus