Zoology. 671 



I am not certain whether the same trees are infested this 

 year as on the preceding ones ; but I rather believe not. As 

 far as my observation extends, the moths seem passing on- 

 wards, taking the country, as it were, in streaks across from 

 north to south. If it should be so, I for one shall be most 

 happy when they have passed away from this part of the 

 country, and cannot wish them any better fortune than that 

 they would find a refuge in the sea; but from this I fear 

 instinct will be their preserver. 



Perhaps I have already trespassed too long on your pa- 

 tience, with what may have little interest for any but those 

 subjected to the ravages of which I have endeavoured to 

 convey a faint idea ; but it is, Sir, in the hope that some of 

 your readers will acquaint me, through the medium of this 

 Magazine, whether any other parts of the country have suf- 

 fered in a similar manner, or whether they remember a like 

 circumstance in any former times ; as my own memory, ex- 

 tending to more than twenty years, does not afford me any 

 instance of effects produced by such a cause, at once so com- 

 plete and so mournful. I am, Sir, yours, &c. — C P. Surrey, 

 Jime 7^1832. 



Oak trees are somewhat numerous in Kensington Gardens; 

 and, from their leaves and branches, in hot sunny days, in the 

 latter half of May, and in the earliest days of June, 1832, 

 almost millions of small caterpillars might be seen depending 

 on threads of every length. The day on which I first hap- 

 pened to see them was the 1 8th of May, a sunny day ; but 

 that they were visible previously is certain from the fact, that 

 the caterpillars, which are of a lead colour tinted with green, 

 and sparingly hirsute, were then, some of them, half an inch 

 long, and depended on threads seven or eight feet long. So 

 abundant were they on some oak trees, that the excrementitious 

 matter from them kept falling, and tinkling on the grass blades 

 below, so frequently, as to give the idea of a sprinkling of rain 

 being then falling. Now, June 10., the oak leaves look 

 seriously the worse for the ravages of these creatures, which, 

 owing possibly to the late rains, are scarcely to be seen de- 

 pending on their threads, and riding, as they were before, in 

 see-saw luxury, as the gentle breeze (and there is ever a 

 breeze under trees) might sink or swell. The margins ot 

 many of the gnawed oak leaves are rolled up, and in some of 

 the involutions are pupas, but in many of them the tenants are 

 still caterpillars, and I suspect that these have yet scarcely fed 

 their fill, but will, when sunny weather returns, sally forth, 

 to resume and complete their manducations. The pupas are 

 black. In some cases, a colony of some fifty or a hundred 

 individuals seem to start off, almost contemporaneously, from 



