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amples of a remarkably small animal doing an immense amount of damage. Like 
many other insects it is from some cause or other excessively abundant in particu- 
lar seasons. This year it has been remarkably so, and, combined with the effects 
of late frosts, made the oaks, in many places, quite bare and brown. Whether 
there is any connection with the fact of the late hard winters having destroyed 
such large numbers of the small birds as to make them noticeably less abundant 
than usual, might be an interesting subject of inquiry. I have little doubt that 
this is one great reason. 
The larva or caterpillar is hatched from eggs laid the previous season, early in 
May. As soon as the oak leaves unfold, it speedily commences to roll down the 
corner of a leaf to afford itself protection both from cold, and also from its natural 
enemies, the small birds, who are just at this season making enormous demands 
on the insect tribe to supply their nests of young. In ordinary seasons the oak 
furnishes them with abundance of food without the eaten leaves being missed, but, 
as I said before, when they are so excessively abundant as in the present season, 
they not only strip the oaks, but have to descend to the nut and other trees grow- 
ing below, which they also strip. After changing its skin two or three times, it 
attains maturity about the middle of June. It is then of rather large proportions 
compared with the size of the little moth that follows. It stays about a fortnight 
in the chrysalis state rolled up in a leaf, and emerges in the perfect state in the 
beginning of July. Fortunately for the oaks, its ravages are over before the 
midsummer shoot is put forth, so that very shortly after this takes place the trees 
resume their customary appearance. 
Among the hundreds of oak-feeding insects there is none, so far as [am aware, 
that commits any perceptible amount of damage, but this, in other respects, in- 
significant individual, which by the combination of large numbers, makes its 
presence so very visible. I fear that in this paper, which I have advisedly made 
rather short, I have not perhaps given you a learned discourse on a large subject, 
but I think that even these few lines will serve to point out what a vast field for 
inquiry lies at our very doors, for those who have inclination and leisure to take 
up the study of insects. I have brought with me specimens of the moth which 
will perhaps be of interest to some of you. 
