RAVAGES OF CATERPILLARS. 209 



'* ignorant of their history, was under the greatest 

 apprehensions concerning them ; so that even prayers 

 were offered up in some churches to dehver the 

 country from the apprehended approaching cala- 

 mity." 



It seems to have been either the same caterpillar, or 

 one very nearly allied to it, probably that of the 

 golden-tail {PorthesiaChrysorrhcea),wih[ch, inl731-2, 

 produced a similar alarm in France. Reaumur, on 

 going from Paris to Tours, in September 1730, found 

 every oak, great and small, literally swarming with 

 them, and their leaves parched and brown as if some 

 burning wind had passed over them ; for when newly 

 hatched, hke the young buff-tips, they only eat one 

 of the membranes of the leaf, and of course the other 

 withers away. These infant legions, under the shelter 

 of their warm nests*, survived the winter in such 

 numbers, that they th/eatened the destruction not 

 only of the fruit-trees, but of the forests, — every tree, 

 as Reaumur says, being over-run with them. The 

 Parliament of Paris thought that ravages so widely 

 extended loudly called for their interference, and 

 they accordingly issued an edict, to compel the people 

 to uncaterpillar {dechejiiller) the trees ; which Reau- 

 mur ridiculed as impracticable, at least in the forests. 

 About the middle of May, however, a succession of 

 cold rains produced so much mortality among the 

 caterpillars, that the people were happily released 

 from the edict ; for it soon became difficult to find a 

 single individual of the species f. In the same way the 

 cold rains, during the summer of 1829, seem to have 

 nearly annihilated the lackeys, which, in the early part 

 of the summer, swarmed on every hedge around 

 London %. The ignorance displayed in France at the 

 time in question was not inferior to that recorded by 



* See Insect Architecture, p. 331, for a figure. 

 f Reaumur, ii. p. 137. J Insect Arcliilecture, p. 329. 



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