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XIII. — Notes on the Effects of the Extreme Wet Winter of 

 1852 — 3, on Insects. By Thomas John Bold. 



[Read at the Anniversary Meeting, March 15, 1854.] 



We read, in Entomological books, " tliat extreme wet is more 

 prejudicial to insect life than severe cold." Wishing to test the 

 truth of this axiom, I have, during the past season, carefully 

 noted the appearance of insects ; and although those notes are not 

 so conclusive or satisfactory as I could have wished, yet, per- 

 chance, they may possess sufficient interest to warrant my laying 

 them before the Club, hoping thereby to draw attention to a 

 very interesting subject. 



Every one will recollect the prodigious fall of rain during the 

 autumn and winter of 1852-3. The preceding summer had 

 been ungenial, and of a moist character. In August, we began 

 to have frequent showers — an earnest of what was to follow. 

 September, with little exception, was characterised by heavy 

 rains ; but, in October, November, December, and January, we 

 had such tremendous and continuous rains, that many parts of 

 the country were flooded, and our heavy clay lands, as well as 

 much of the finer soil of the Tyne vale, and elsewhere, so com- 

 pletely saturated with wet, that farmers found it quite impossible 

 to sow the usual quantity of wheat ; indeed, in many districts, 

 none whatever of that valuable cereal could be sown, either in 

 autumn or spring ; the land, consequently, having either to lie in 

 " fallow," or crops of oats, barley, or other grain, to be substi- 

 tuted ; thus causing a great deficiency of one of our most highly 

 valued articles of food, and a consequent enhancement of value, 

 which is now pressing severely upon many of the labouring 

 classes. 



The wet continued up to the 10th of February, when intense 

 frost set in, and we had a heavy fall of snow, which covered the 

 whole of our district until the latter end of March, when we had 

 a few days of mild weather, which, however, soon gave way to 

 cold, ungenial, piercing winds, which partially dried the surface 



