224 PALMER WORM ITS SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCE. 



according to my own observations, those trees which stood in 

 situations where they were openly exposed to the sun appeared 

 to be most severely devastated, whilst in some instances at least, 

 those standing in the shade of buildings remained green and un- 

 harmed; though I was informed of cases in which trees in shaded 

 situations were stripped of their leaves. 



The trees everywhere assumed a brown withered appearance, 

 looking as though they had been scorched by fire. Apple trees 

 and oaks seemed to suffer most, but all other trees and shrubs 

 were more or less infested with these worms at this time. On 

 jarring or shaking a tree, hundreds would instantly let them- 

 selves down from among the leaves, by fine threads like cobweb, 

 some dropping to the ground, others remaining suspended in the 

 air. Persons at work at this time upon potatoes or other field 

 crops growing in orchards would have numbers of them crawl- 

 ing everywhere over their clothes, and, as an instance of the 

 power of the imagination, the following may be related : A ro- 

 bust laboring man assured me that in three instances in which 

 these worms happened to fall upon his naked arm he felt a sting- 

 ing sensation like that from the puncture of a mosquito, this 

 being occasioned, as he was firmly persuaded, by their bite. But 

 other persons, with these worms crawling in numberless in- 

 stances upon their naked skin, experienced nothing of this kind; 

 and subsisting as they do exclusively upon leaves and other 

 succulent vegetation, it is not probable that they employ their 

 jaws upon any substance for which they can have no relish; their 

 natural resort when irritated being not to bite but to wriggle 

 violently and thus throw themselves away from the place where 

 they are molested. 



The worms continued in full force until the night of the 

 twenty-third of June, when brisk showers occurred, accompa- 

 nied with heavy thunder, terminating the drouth which had pre- 

 vailed, and with this the worms suddenly disappeared. Upon 

 the following day not one could be obtained by shaking trees 

 which had been overrun with them the day before — the rain 

 drops falling upon the leaves having doubtless dislodged them, 

 in the course of the night, and perhaps drowning a considerable 

 portion of them after reaching the ground. With a beating net. 



