86 LEAFAGE CATERPILLARS. 
Later on, on May 20th, writing from Holnicote, Taunton, Mr. C. 
T. D. Acland observed :—‘‘ The Oak trees here are being dreadfully 
stripped, and in some places the Beeches also.” 
In the Forest of Dean, in Gloucestershire, the caterpiliar ravage 
was very severe, and, like that in the New Forest, caused by several 
different kinds of moth caterpillars, of which, so far as I could ascer- 
tain by the specimens in the young condition sent, some were of the 
Mottled Umber Moth, of which the lary have been so very widely 
spread, and so destructive in the past season, and others of the Oak- 
leaf Roller Moth, Yortrix viridana. Other specimens forwarded were 
not, so far as I am aware, of importance; but amongst them were 
samples of two good helpers towards keeping down infestation, in the 
shape of an ichneumon fly, and also the carnivorous green grub of a 
Syrphus, or allied two-winged fly. 
On May 29th Mr. Charles Bathurst, Jun., of Lydney Park, Lydney, 
Gloucestershire, wrote me as follows :— 
‘We are suffering terrible devastation from injurious larve at the 
present time in and near the Forest of Dean. . . . In many a dry 
season have I seen the tops of the Oaks in the Forest laid bare, but 
never have I seen the ‘ wholesale stripping’ which is at present taking 
place; in many parts of the Forest, trees may be counted by the 
hundred without a single leaf on them. They are now spreading 
beyond the confines of the Forest itself, and, not content with forest 
trees, are commencing a terrible onslaught on fruit trees and garden 
shrubs. ‘The commonest of all, and apparently the most voracious, is 
the long and well-marked reddish brown ‘looper,’ with a red head, 
yellow lateral lines, and one pair of prolegs only” [Hybernia de- 
Joliaria.—Kp.|. ‘There seem to be but few. leaves they will not eat; 
they swarm on the Oak, Elm, Hazel, Whitethorn, and are to be found 
in myriads on the fruit bushes. They do not appear to do much, if 
any, damage to the Ash, Beech, or Chestnut.”—(C. B.) 
Besides these, Mr. Bathurst mentioned another kind of ‘ looper” 
caterpillar (green, with only one pair of prolegs), which, conjecturally, 
was of the kind especially known as the Winter Moth, and yet another, 
of which he remarks, ‘‘ From the description in your book I take this 
to be the Tortrix viridana”; and amongst other things, notices the 
activity of this caterpillar, and its habit on alarm of darting out of the 
tunnel, which it has rolled up of a part of the leaf with a silken web, 
and letting itself so quickly down by a thread that it was impossible 
to catch it. 
The following note, sent me on May 26th from Ragley Gardens, 
Alcester, Warwickshire, was one of the most northerly records of 
observation of attack, and refers to presence of ‘looper’? moth cater- 
pillars, and also of Sawfly caterpillars, which I have very rarely, if at 
