334 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



lide-tliichcs filled fi-ora the Thames, were so fringed with 

 willows that the whole tract looked like a willow-forest. It 

 has been said that the willow-trees once niuiibered 100,000 ; 

 this is questionable : I will, however, vouch for the presence 

 of thousands in the year 1830 ; yet now, in the year 1869, 

 there is scarcely one. For years rows of wretched worm- 

 eaten stumps were visible here and there : but even these are 

 disappearing, and scarcely a trace remains of that willow 

 scenery which Claude so delighted to paint. And this is the 

 work of the goat-moth, or the work, rather, of generations of 

 goat-moths, aided and abetted, it must be confessed, by what 

 is termed the spirit of railway enterprise. 



At the time to which I especially refer, and for some years 

 afterwards, I was the owner of an avenue of willows. It is a 

 grand term, I admit, but truthful withal ; yet although an 

 idea of aristocratic standing may surround the proprietor of 

 an avenue of oaks, I believe an avenue of willows in Dept- 

 ford, Rotherhilhe or Bermondsey, has never, within my time, 

 been associated with the notion of plethoric rent-roll, remote 

 ancestry, or heraldic bearings ; therefore the boast of having 

 possessed such an avenue must be taken for what it is worth, 

 and no more. It indicates the fabrication of cables, — a pro- 

 cess requiring the shade that is now usually afforded by a 

 tiled shed some third of a mile in length. The willows (the 

 individual trees constituting this avenue) were infested with 

 musk-beetles and red underwings galore ; and here I formed 

 my first acquaintance with the goat-moth, and studied its 

 economy with an interest that 1 think has never been ex- 

 ceeded in any of my subsequent observings. 



In the United States of North America another species of 

 Xyleutes, named Robiniaj, is as destructive to the locust-tree 

 (Robinia pseudacaciu) as Xyleutes Cossus is to our English 

 willows; and it is worthy of remark that, although the locust- 

 tree is so universally cultivated here in England, there is 

 no instance of its having been attacked on this side the 

 Atlantic. Thus this beautiful tree (which we call the acacia), 

 the balsam pojilar, the Ontario poplar, and many other 

 imported trees, are remarkably free from insect molestation. 

 Professor Peck seems to have taken an interest in the life- 

 history of Xyleutes Robiniie, very similar to mine in that of 

 X. Cossus, and he has given most admirable details of its 



