Note 408 — PART II.

This was far from being the first appearance of the pest in this district. From 1779 to 1785 similar ravages drove the vignerons to despair; but the weather during the last-named year suddenly turning wet and cold, just at the epoch of the butterflies emerging from their chrysalids, the evil disappeared as though by enchantment, an event duly acknowledged by parochial rejoicings and religious processions. In 1816 similar ravages took place; and from 1820 to 1830 the pyrale also caused great devastation.

In the year 1613, Jehan Pussot, the local chronicler of Reims, notes that a large proportion of the vines were destroyed by ‘a great concourse of worms,’ which attacked those plants which the frost had spared. This would establish that either the pyrale or the cochylis was known to the Champenois viticulturists at the commencement of the seventeenth century.