“There are numerous species, and each species is represented by countless legions of individual moths. Some of these attack fruit; I have just told you about the principal ones. Others have a different mode of life, and of these I will speak to-morrow. But they are all very small moths, and some are beautifully colored. Their antennæ are fine and their wings, rounding at the shoulders, spread out in the form of a cape and are folded together [[362]]in repose like the two halves of a sloping roof; that is, they incline to right and left. Their grubs have a smooth and shiny skin. These worms draw back quickly when molested and let themselves fall to the ground, deadening the shock of the fall by means of a silk thread that holds them suspended by the lip.”
“That’s a clever trick,” Emile observed. “As soon as the worm is frightened it glues the end of the thread to something and down it drops, but gently and only as fast as the thread is let out by the spinneret.”
“This morning,” said Jules, “Mother Ambroisine was picking over some dried peas. A few were pierced with a round hole, and others had a little brown insect spotted with white. Peas, then, have two enemies: the pyralis-worm that eats fresh fruit and the insect I am speaking of that eats them dry.”
“The insect that eats dried peas is a small beetle, a weevil with a wide and very short snout. It is known as the pea-weevil. Another weevil eats beans, and still another lentils. It is always the larva that does the mischief. Once arrived at the perfect state, the weevil bores a round hole in the seed and gets out. These weevils have the same habits as the grain-weevil. They are destroyed by the use of sulphide of carbon, or simply by the action of heat if the seeds they infest are not to be sown, for the temperature required to kill the insects and their larvæ would also destroy the germinative principle of the seed.” [[363]]
CHAPTER L
LEAF-ROLLERS
“Many of the moths bearing the name of pyralis have a curious habit in their larva state, of rolling up the leaves of trees, or of folding them lengthwise, or of uniting several in the form of a sheath by means of silk threads, so as to make a shelter in which they may nibble away in safety at the interior of their green abode. For this reason they are called leaf-rollers. The one best known, on account of the damage it does, is the grapevine-pyralis.
“It is a small moth with yellow wings having the metallic sheen of copper and crossed by brown stripes. Its larva is greenish, bristling with short hairs and having a head of a dark lustrous green color. In August the moth lays its eggs on the vine leaves in little slabs of twenty at most. Hatching takes place in September. At this advanced season of the year caterpillars do not eat; they suspend themselves by a thread and wait for the wind to drive them against the vine or one of its supports. As soon as they get a foothold on the desired object they take refuge in cracks in the bark and fissures in the wood, and there they lie torpid through the winter. At the reawakening of vegetable [[364]]life and the first pushing forth of the new vine shoots they leave their winter quarters, invade the vines, and entwine with silk threads the young grape clusters and the tender leaves, after which they feed upon them with an appetite sharpened by a fast of five or six months. With such ravenous eaters devastation proceeds apace, and in a few weeks, if the worms are numerous, the most flourishing vine is reduced to a pitiful condition and all hope of a harvest is abandoned. The ravages wrought by this moth between 1835 and 1840 in the vineyards of Bourgogne will long be remembered. Over immense tracts of land, when vintage-time came, there was not a single bunch of grapes to go into the basket. The greedy caterpillars ruined the country.”
