Now rare or Obs. [VINE sb.] 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.
1727. W. Hooper, trans. Helvetius’ Treat. Man (1810), I. 93, note. To undeceive ourselves, we should with the most accurate and scrupulous attention enclose 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.
