Thou shalt plant vineyards, and dress them, but shalt neither drink of the wine, nor gather the grapes; for the worms shall eat them.
Thou shalt plant vineyards ... but shalt neither drink of the wine, nor gather the grapes; for the worms shall eat them. The vine, in all stages of its growth, is the prey of insects. While the Curculio vastator feeds upon the young shoots, often killing them the first year; while the small caterpillar of a Procris or Zygaena is destructive to the vine-buds as they open in the spring, eating its way into them, and devouring the germ of the grape; while the larvae of a moth (Pyralis vitana, F.) are in France very destructive to the leaves, and another species does great injury to the young bushes, preventing their expansion by the webs in which it involves them, a third (Pyralis fasciana, F.) makes the grapes themselves its food; and it is this, or a similar insect, that is threatened in the prediction (Kirby and Spence's 'Entomology,' 1:, pp. 200, 201). Very few vineyards are now seen in Palestine (NOTE: toward the end of the 19th century).