208 INSECT TRANSFORMATIONS. 



his Aurelian, says, that the caterpillar of the Camber- 

 well beauty {Vanessa Antiopa) , which feeds grega- 

 riously on the willow, sometimes defoliates the trees 

 of a whole district in the Low Countries; but the 

 ravages observed by us were evidently made by the 

 caterpillars of some small moth.* 



None of the preceding details, however, appear so 

 striking as what is recorded of the brown-tail moth 

 {Porthesia auriflua), by Mr W. Curtis,! whose 

 multitudinous colonies spread great alarm over the 

 country in the summer of 1782. This alarm was 

 much increased by the exaggeration and ignorant de- 

 tails which found their way into the newspapers. The 

 actual numbers of these caterpillars must have been 

 immense, since Curtis says, ' in many of the parishes 

 near London subscriptions have been opened, and 

 the poor people employed to cut off the websj at one 

 shilling per bushel, which have been burnt under the 

 inspection of the churchwardens, overseers, or beadle 

 of tiie parish: at the first onset of this business four- 

 score bushels, as I was most credibly informed, were 

 collected in one day in the parish of Clapham.' 



It is not, therefore, very much to be wondered at, 

 that the ignorant, who are so prone to become the 

 victim of groundless fears, should have taken serious 

 alarm on having so unusual a phenomenon forced 

 upon their attention. Some alarmists accordingly 

 asserted that the caterpillars ^ were the usual presage 

 of the plague;' and others that they not only pre- 

 saged it, but would actually cause it, for ' their 

 numbers were great enough to render the air pesti- 

 lential,' while, to add to the mischief, ' they would 

 destroy every kind of vegetation, and starve the cattle 

 in the fields.' ^ Almost every one,' adds Curtis, 



* J. R, 

 t Curtis, Hist, of Brown-tail Moth, 4to. London, 1782. 

 t See Insect Architecture, page 330, for a figure of the nest. 



