374 RAVAGES OF INSECTS. 



cliiirch wardens, overseers, or beadle of the parish. : at the 

 first onset of this business fourscore 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 presaged 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, " ignorant of their history, 

 was under the greatest apprehensions concerning them ; so 

 that even prayers were offered up in some churches to 

 deliver the country from the apprehended approaching 

 calamity." 



It seems to have been either the same caterpillar, or one 

 very nearly allied to it, probably that of the golden-tail 

 (Porthesia Chrysorrhoea), which in 1731-2 produced a similar 

 alarm in France. Reaumur, on going from Paris to Tours, 

 in September 1730, found every oak, great and small, liter- 

 ally swarming with them, and their leaves parched and 

 brown as if some burning wind had passed over them ; for 

 when newly hatched, like the young buif-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 threatened the destruction not only of the fruit- 

 trees, but of the forests, — every tree, as Reaumur says, 

 being overrun with them. The Parliament of Paris thought 

 that ravages so widely extended loudl}^ called for their in- 

 terference, and they accordingly issued an edict, to compel 

 the people to uncaterpillar (decheniller) the trees ; which 

 Reaumur ridiculed as impracticable, at least in the forests. 

 About the middle of May, hoAvever, a succession of cold 

 rains produced so much mortality among the caterpillars, 



