22 



Observations upo?i the Lunar Hornet Sphinx. 



sect might be met with in sufficient plenty in this part of the 

 country, if one were acquainted with its habits, and knew how 

 to look for it. To the woodman our elegant sphinx must be 

 regarded as in some degree an injurious insect. The wood 

 of Salix caprea is, with us, usually either sold to the rake- 

 maker, for the purpose of being worked up into rake-teeth, &c, 

 or converted into what are here called flakes, i. e. hurdles 

 made of split stuff nailed together, in contradistinction to 

 the common hurdle, which is formed of round wood, twisted 

 and plaited together without the help of nails. The lower, 

 and consequently the thickest, portion of each willow rod, to 

 the length of five or six inches, or occasionally a foot or more, 

 is spoiled by the perforations of the larva, and rendered un- 

 available to the above purposes. It may seem an odd com- 

 plaint to make: but Salix caprea appears to be a tree of 

 rather too rapid a growth ; that is to say, it outruns its neigh- 

 bours, and comes to maturity before the rest of the underwood 

 with which it is intermixed. If, indeed, the entire underwood 

 consisted of this species only, the coppice would make a quick 

 return, and might be cut at the end of every seven or eight 

 years, or in little more than half the time usually allowed for 

 the growth of coppice-wood. My own practice is, to cut wood 

 at about ten or eleven years' growth. Long before the time 

 comes round for the periodical fall, I observe that on every 

 stool of the broad-leaved willow most of the rods have ceased 

 to thrive, and many have even died ; and I cannot help sus- 

 pecting that this premature decay may, in part at least, be 

 owing to the injury inflicted at the base of the stems by the 

 larvae of Trochilium crabroniformis. 

 Allesley Rectory, Nov. 7. 1836. 



