Page:Scientific Memoirs, Vol. 1 (1837).djvu/229

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under which it is placed, and then to shake the branches and make the insects fall into it. The substitution for the basin of a very wide tin funnel with a bag at the extremity, into which the insects fall, has been proposed; also that of linen twisted into the same form. The same means may be applied for the caterpillars of the butterfly or moth as for the Coleoptera, especially when they have arrived at a certain size. The devastation is then indeed almost completed, for the leaves are decayed and partly devoured; but the repetition of the evil in the following years may be precluded by thus preventing the reproduction of the insects. To this method may be added another, which is particularly adapted to the destruction of the Pyralis of the vine, the Procris ampelophaga of Passerini, and in general to that of all the small species of Phalænæ which attack the vine: it is that of lighting fires at the commencement of the night in a direction opposite to the wind. The insects come in crowds to the fire and are burned. These fires must be renewed for ten or twelve days in succession, but not when there is much rain or wind; for not only the flame will not burn, but the butterflies in such weather remain obstinately fixed to the leaves to which they have attached themselves. The most effectual method of destroying all the larvæ of the Lepidoptera and Coleoptera which attack the vine is to remove, one by one, the coiled leaves in which these insects have deposited their eggs, and to throw them into a furnace and burn them. This method is the most tedious and expensive, but it is also the most certain; and I have seen it pursued with great patience and care in the state of Nassau by the cultivators on the banks of the Rhine.


Third Section.

Synonymy of all the species of insects which have been mentioned in these researches.

We shall present in this section one of the principal summaries of these investigations by giving the synonymy of all the insects of which we have had occasion to treat; but to adapt it to the end in view we must proceed in an order the inverse of that which we followed in the preceding section; that is, we must first give the synonymy of the insects which are most detrimental to the vine plants, and then proceed to those which only injure them occasionally, and conclude with those which the ancients have erroneously designated as the enemies of the vine; carefully conforming, with regard to each of these three sorts of insects, to the classification most generally adopted by modern naturalists. Finally, we shall conclude by giving a list of insects which do not injure the vine, but the synonymy of which has been incidentally determined in these researches.