INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 117 



padelld), is often so numerous as to defoliate the apple trees by the road 

 sides for miles. 1 Three species of beetles a\ao,Rhynchites alliance, which in 

 the larva state bores into the young shoots, and Nemoicus oblongus and 

 Phyllopertha horticola, which attack the leaves as perfect insects, join their 

 lepidopterous brethren in Germany in a general assault on fruit-trees. 



If we quit the orchard and fruit-garden for a walk in our plantations and 

 groves, we shall still be forced to witness the sad effects of insect devasta- 

 tion ; and when we see, as sometimes happens, the hedges and trees en- 

 tirely deprived of their foliage, and ourselves of the shade we love from 

 the fervid beam of the noonday sun ; when the singing birds have deserted 

 them ; and all their music, which has so often enchanted us by its melody, 

 variety, and sweetness has ceased we shall be tempted in our hearts 

 to wish the whole insect race was blotted from the page of creation. 

 Numerous are the agents employed in this work of destruction. Amongst 

 the beetles, various cockchafers (Melolontha vutgaris, Amphimalla solsti- 

 tialis, and Phyllopertha horticola), in their perfect state, act as conspicuous 

 a part in injuring the trees as their grubs do in destroying the herbage. 

 Besides the leaves of the fruit-trees, they devour those of the sycamore, 

 the lime, the beech, the willow, and the elm. They are sometimes es- 

 pecially the common one, astonishingly numerous. Mouffet relates (but 

 one would think that there must be some mistake in the date, since they are 

 never so early in their appearance) that on the 24th of February, 1574-, 

 such a number of them fell into the river Severn as to stop the wheels of 

 the water-mills. 2 It is also recorded in the Philosophical Transactions, 

 that in 1688 they filled the hedges and trees of part of the county of Gal- 

 way in such infinite numbers, as to cling to each other in clusters like bees 

 when they swarm ; on the wing they darkened the air, and produced a 

 sound like that of distant drums. When they were feeding, the noise of 

 their jaws might be mistaken for the sawing of timber. Travellers and 

 people abroad were very much annoyed by their continual flying in their 

 faces ; and in a short time the leaves of all the trees for some miles round 

 were so totally consumed by them, that at midsummer the country wore 

 the aspect of the depth of winter. 3 



But the criminals to whom it is principally owing that our groves are 

 sometimes stripped of the green robe of summer are the various tribes of 

 Lepidoptcra, especially the nightfliers or moths, myriads of whose cater- 

 pillars, in certain seasons, despoil whole districts of their beauty, and our 

 walks of all their pleasure. Some of these, like the cockchafers, or the 

 caterpillars of Clisiocampa neusfria, Porthesia chrysorrhcea, &c., before men- 

 tioned as attacking most fruit-trees, are also general feeders on forest 

 trees, though some of the species usually prefer particular kinds when 

 accessible. Thus in 1731 the oaks of France were terribly devastated 

 by the larva of Hypogymna dispar 4 ; as are often those of Germany by that 



' * Loudon's Gardener's Mag. Oct. 1837. 



2 Mouffet, 160. 



5 Philos. Trans, xix. 741. 



4 Reaum. i. 387. These larvae were so extremely numerous in 1826 on the lines 

 of iliQ Alice Verte at Brussels, that many of the trees of that noble avenue, though 

 of great age, were nearly deprived of their leaves, and afforded little of the shade 

 which the unusual heat of the summer so urgently required. The moths which in 

 autumn proceeded from them, when in motion towards night, swarmed like bees, and 

 subsequently on the trunk of every tree might be seen scores of females depositing 



I 3 



