BY A. W. SCOTT, M.A. 43 



twenty-five acres would amonnt to 871,200,000,000. What then, 

 calculating under the same conditions, would be the number of 

 the caterpillars, which were, at the time I allude to, ravaging 

 whole districts ? — a long line of figures almost unpronounceable. 



Allowing for every reasonable loss caused by weather, not 

 unusually severe, accident, or by their numerous enemies, still 

 there would remain quite sufiicient to produce those vast numbers 

 of moths, collected together from a wide range of country and seen 

 clustering in caves, under ledges of rocks, in churches, houses, 

 barns, in every nook and cranny where their gregarious habits 

 lead them to, seeking shelter from the glai'e of day. I, therefore, 

 think that this natural increase, aided by favourable weather, is 

 quite suSicient to account for the swarms of moths recently seen 

 in many localities, and remarked upon by several correspondents 

 of the " Sydney Morning Herald " without having recourse to 

 improbable theories. All moths are in their primary stages 

 purely terrestrial, and cannot " come in from the sea " in the 

 sense used by a writer in the " Newcastle Chronicle.''^ They 

 cannot be born there, neither are their wings adapted for so long 

 a flight as to cross the ocean from any point of land to the 

 eastward of our coast, particularly " in the teeth of westerly 

 winds." Indeed many swarms of insects, besides the lepi- 

 doptera, are known to be blown from the land, while a few others 

 wilfully fly seaward under some unaccountable, almost insane, 

 desire ; but all these inevitably perish. Mr. Lindley, when at 

 Brazil, in 1803, saw an immense flight of butterflies for several 

 days successively, which were observed never to settle, but flew 

 in a direction from north-west to south-east, direct towards the 

 ocean where they must certainly perish ; and Mr. Barrow in 

 1797, writes "the locusts covered an ai"ea of nearly 2,000 square 

 miles were driven into the sea by a north-west wind, and formed 

 a bank three or four feet high, and when the wind was south-east, 

 the stench was so powerful as to be perceptible at the distance of 

 one hundred and fifty miles." 



Without multiplying instances I would suggest that the 

 moths seen by vessels at sea were either endeavouring vainly to 

 emigrate, or, what is far more prohahle, were driven away from 

 the land by the prevalent westerly winds, and perished by 



