Page:Scientific Memoirs, Vol. 1 (1837).djvu/226

 the common broom, the elm, and twenty other plants. The Sphinx Elpenor, or the Sphinx of the vine of Geoffroy, (this is not the Sphinx Vitis of modern entomologists, an American butterfly which does not live upon the vine,) is frequently found upon the vine, but it is also met with not less frequently upon the Epilobium, the Salicaria, the balsam, and the convolvulus. Lastly, the Sphinx Porcellus, or the Sphinx with red indented bands, the caterpillar of which is sometimes found upon the vine, but still more often upon the honey-suckle, lavender, and more especially upon the yellow bed-straw, Galium verum. The last two species have caterpillars as large as the little finger, and as they keep upon the summit of the shoots they may be easily removed.

These are the caterpillars or larvae of Lepidoptera which the Greeks and Latins, when speaking of insects infesting the vine, designated by the general names of Kampe or Eruca; but they did not confound these larvae with worms, and they knew that they underwent metamorphoses.

X. Phtheir.—Tholea or Tholaath.—Coccus Vitis —Kermes of the Vine.—Coccus Adonidum.—Greenhouse Coccus.—The Phtheir or louse of the vine, which Ctesias mentions as an insect which causes the vine to perish, and which in the Geoponics is classed with the caterpillars among that plant's greatest enemies, can correspond only to the Coccus Vitis, to the Cocci, or the Kermes of the vine. We know that the Cocci or gall-insects, or the Cochineals, with the Aphides, are the insects which, from their small size and their rapid multiplication, are the most similar to the louse; their females also, like lice, are apterous, or without wings. The Cocci cover so completely the bark of the trees that it has a scurfy appearance. When the female has deposited her eggs, her body dries up and becomes a solid crust, which covers the eggs, and its squamous surface is not unlike fat nits. These insects do harm by piercing the wood with their sharp proboscis, which is formed of a sheath having numerous joints, and three bristles or darts of great tenuity. With this tube they suck the sap and cause it to flow.