CATERPILLARS. 373 



the single nest upon which we tried the preceding experi- 

 ment. (J. R.) This present spring (1830) they have again 

 appeared in millions on the hedges. 



Eeanmur says that in some years they were exceedingl}^ 

 destructive to his apple-trees, though they did not touch his 

 pears, plums, or apricots,* which agrees precisely with our 

 own remarks. We are well aware that there are several 

 species of the small ermines, all similar in manners, such 

 as the one which feeds on the spindle-tree (Euonymus), and 

 produces the prettiest moth of the genus ( Yponomeuta Eiiony- 

 mella) ; but our preceding remarks all apply to one species. 



In 1829 we remarked a very extraordinary number of 

 webs of some similar caterpillar, of which we did not ascer- 

 tain the species, on the willows in Holland and the Nether- 

 lands, from Amsterdam to Ostend. In some districts, par- 

 ticularly near Bruges and Rotterdam, the leaves were 

 literally stripped from whole rows of trees; while other 

 rows, at no considerable distance, were entirely free from 

 their ravages. A foreign naturalist, quoted by Harris in 

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

 well beauty ( Vanessa Antiopa), which feeds gregariously on 

 the willow, sometimes defoliates the trees of a whole district 

 in the Low Countries ; but the ravages obs:erved by us 

 were evidently made by the caterpillars of some small 

 moth. (J. R.) 



None of the preceding details, however, appear so striking 

 as what is recorded of the brown-tail moth (Forthesia auri- 

 Jiua) by Mr. W Curtis, f whose multitudinous colonies 

 spread great alarm over the country in the summer of 1782. 

 This alarm was much increased by the exaggeration and 

 ignorant details which found their way into the news- 

 papers. 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 webs at one shilling per 

 bushel, which have been burnt under the inspection of the 



* Keaumiir, Mem. ii. 198. 



t Ciu-tis, Hist, of Brown-tail Moth, 4to. London, 1782. • 



