Zoology. 669 



theless, spent numbers of dreary hours in that extensive 

 forest at these periods, without the desired success, and was 

 certainly fortunate in my discovery at last, by accident rather 

 than by intention. I may here observe, that the insect either 

 appears shiggish in its habits, or is altogether unconscious of 

 its danger, as it suffered me to approach and take it off the 

 stem of the fern without making the slightest effort to escape. 

 A few days after taking the first, I discovered a second, and 

 very fine specimen, in the same situation ; and, two days after 

 this, I caught another in my net. From the nature of the 

 flight of this, I had imagined it to be the 6E'strus Z?6vis, as it 

 exactly resembled the flight of this insect, except that the 

 duration of the flight of the Cicada haematodes is short. 

 The first insect had evidently flown some time, from the wasted 

 state in which I found it. I was strongly reminded at the 

 moment of an observation of that eminent entomologist, Mr. 

 Haworth, in describing a rare insect, — " It had rather over- 

 travelled." I have taken five specimens in the course of my 

 researches, by watching their passage, going immediately to 

 the spot, and taking them up with my finger and thumb. 

 The Cicada moves onl}^ when the sun shines, and in the di- 

 rection through the New Forest, from Lyndhurst towards 

 Brockenhurst, keeping on the left hand side of the turnpike 

 road, about the space of from half a mile to a mile within the 

 forest ; and this I believe to be the only locality in which it 

 has hitherto been taken. The reason why more have not 

 been captured, I should imagine to be this, that, from its 

 flight, it has been generally imagined to be a very common 

 insect. I am. Sir, yours, &c. — R. Weaver, Temple Row, 

 Bimiing/mfn, Nov. 28. 1831. 



Extensive Ravages committed hy the Caterpillar of the Tortrix 

 viriddna on the heaves of Oak Trees, in Surrey, in the last 

 Three Years. — Sir, Of the power possessed by insects indivi- 

 dually small, and of little importance, when united together 

 in numbers, of defacing the beauty of a country, we have full 

 proof in the accounts we read of the wandering locust, that 

 ravages the East and Northern Africa ; leaving, in its passage, 

 what was smiling in verdure, a dreary and desolate waste. In 

 our own, in that respect, more fortunate land, we had almost 

 deemed ourselves free from such extreme devastation ; but 

 for the last three summers we have been visited by a plague 

 scarcely less unpleasant, though certainly less generally ter- 

 rible in its effects. It is now for three successive springs that 

 the fine oak woods filling the valleys in the neighbourhood of 

 Haslemere have been infested with the caterpillar of the Tortrix 

 viridana, to so considerable an extent as completely to destroy 

 the beauty of their appearance ; giving them worse than the 



