vine-fretter Now rare or Obs.
[vine n.]
A grub or insect (in later use, a species of aphis) feeding upon vines.
| 1608 Topsell Serpents 105 After the manner of Vine⁓fretters, which are a kind of Catterpillers, or little hayrie wormes with many feete, that eate Vines when they begin to shoote. 1661 Lovell Hist. Anim. & Min. Isagoge c 2, The butyri in vines, and ipes, and the vinefretter in the leaves thereof. 1725 Fam. Dict. s.v. Diseases of Trees, The Vine-fretter, a little black Animal, does a great deal of Mischief to Trees. 1762 Mills Syst. Pract. Husb. I. 471 Almost all the peas in his neighbourhood were destroyed that year by a kind of vermin called vine-fretters. 1777 W. Hooper Helvetius' Treat. Man I. 91 note, We should..inclose a vine-fretter in a phial. 1848 Bartlett Dict. Amer. 374 Vine-fretter,..an insect very destructive to vines, rose bushes, cabbages, &c. in the Southern States. 1895 Dublin Rev. Oct. 444 He considered the generation of vine fretters from a new point of view. |