INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 209 



about Bayreuth suffered a similar injury from that of 

 H. Monacha a . Those of Germany are also sometimes laid 

 waste by the caterpillar of a beautiful moth belonging to 

 the Noctuidte (Achatea spreta b ) 9 which has b^en taken in 

 England. Cheimatolia brnmata is likewise a fearful enemy 

 to the foliage of almost every kind of tree c . The woods 

 in certain provinces of North America are in some years 

 entirely stripped by that of another moth, which eats all 

 kinds of leaves. This happening at a time of the year 

 when the heat is most excessive is attended by fatal con- 

 sequences. For, being deprived of the shelter of their 

 foliage, whole forests are sometimes entirely dried up 

 and ruined d . The brown-tail moth, before alluded to, 

 which occasionally bares our hawthorn hedges, has been 

 rendered famous by the alarm it caused to the inhabitants 

 of the vicinity of the metropolis in 1782, when rewards 

 were offered for collecting the caterpillars, and the 

 churchwardens and overseers of the parishes attended 

 to see them burnt by bushels. You may have observed 

 perhaps in some cabinets of foreign insects an ant, the 

 head of which is very large in proportion to the size of 

 its body, with a piece of leaf in its mouth many times 

 bigger than itself. These ants, called in Tobago parasol 

 ants ((Ecodoma cephalotes], cut circtJar pieces out of the 

 leaves of various trees and plants, which they carry in 

 their jaws to their nests, and they will strip a tree of its 

 leaves in a night, a circumstance which has been con- 

 so numerous, that in the Boisde Boulogne there was scarcely an oak, 

 the under side of the branches of which were not covered by them 

 for an extent of seven or eight feet. He informs us that the eggs 

 are not hatched till the following spring. 



a Wiener Vcrzeich. 8vo. 75. b Curtis Brit. Ent. t. 117. 



c De Geer, ii. 452. d Kalm's Travels, ii. 7. 



VOL. I. P 



