THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



159 



the latter part of May and the early weeks of June. By the 5th of the 

 latter month they had become about two-thirds grown, when the daily 

 consumption of foliage was so immense that their presence attracted 

 general attention and the most vigorous onslaughts were made on them 

 from all sides. But notwithstanding they were slain every day by 

 Fig. 6. millions, their numbers seemed scarcely to diminish. In 



many places the forests by the middle of June were so 

 completely denuded that they afforded but little more 

 shade than in mid-winter, trees of all kinds suffering 

 severely. They attacked the oak, ash, bass wood, maple, 

 thorn, cherry, beech and hickory, as well as almost all 

 sorts of fruit and ornamental trees, and during June 

 their activity in travelling from place to place was so 

 incessant that the most constant vigilance was required 

 to save favorite trees from destruction. Their habit 

 of congregating in large masses on the trunks of the 

 trees they fed on in the mornings rendered their 

 partial destruction comparatively easy ; had it not been 

 for this scarcely a leaf would have been left on any of the trees named in 

 the whole neighborhood. 



When the larvae began to change to chrysalids they sewed up the 

 remaining fragments of the few leaves still unconsumed on the trees into 

 all kinds of curious shapes, each enclosure frequently protecting two or 

 three cocoons. These cases hanging pendant with the weight of their 

 contents, and with the paler under surfaces of the leaves displayed, looked 

 in many instances as if a crop of some strange fruit was maturing. On 

 gathering a number of the chrysalids, a very large proportion of them were 

 found infested with parasites, chiefly dipterous, with occasional examples 

 of the hymenopterous order. 



Early in July the evenings were enlivened by large numbers of the 

 moths which flew vigorously about in lighted rooms, thumping against 

 everything in their erratic and apparently aimless flight. In a few days 

 their egg masses were to be seen in considerable numbers on the branches 

 of fruit and forest trees, where they will remain, unless otherwise 

 destroyed, until the period of their hatching next spring. 



