468 OBSERVATIONS ON 



PHAL^NA QUERCUS. 



MOST of our oaks are naked of leaves, and even the 

 Holt in general, having been ravaged by the caterpillars 

 of a small Phalcena which is of a pale yellow colour. 

 These insects, though a feeble race, yet, from their infi- 

 nite numbers, are of wonderful effect, being able to 

 destroy the foliage of whole forests and districts. At 

 this season they leave their aurelia, and issue forth in 

 their fly state, swarming and covering the trees and 

 hedges. 



In a field at Greatham, I saw a flight of swifts busied 

 in catching their prey near the ground ; and found they 

 were hawking after these Phal&na. The aurelia of this 

 moth is shining and as black as jet ; and lies wrapped 

 up in a leaf of the tree, which is rolled round it, and 

 secured at the ends by a web, to prevent the maggot 

 from falling out 8 . 



tacle is allotted to the egg in a soft and moist nidus, sheltered from the 

 attacks of its enemies, an exit is at the same time secured for the little 

 larva about to be hatched from it, which will only have to advance itself 

 to separate the projecting bristles, and consequently to spread, sufficiently 

 wide to allow of its passage between them, the ridges of the culm which 

 have been, by their intervention, prevented from uniting after the wound 

 inflicted on them : a union which would have effectually enclosed and 

 buried the included egg with its larva, unfurnished as the latter appa- 

 rently is with any means of forcing for itself a passage. The egg of the 

 much more common flat water-bug, Nepa cinerea, LINN., is still more 

 extensively furnished with the curious appendages adverted to: it has 

 no less than seven bristles, forming a crown, as it were, round one of its 

 extremities. E. T. B. 



8 I suspect that the insect here meant is not the Phalcena Quei-cus, but 

 the Phalcena viridata, concerning which, I find the following note in my 

 Naturalist's Calendar for the year 1785: 



About this time, and for a few days last past, I observed the leaves of 

 almost all the oak trees in Denn Copse to be eaten and destroyed, and, 

 on examining more narrowly, saw an infinite number of small beautiful 

 pale green moths flying about the trees ; the leaves of which that were 

 not quite destroyed were curled up, and withinside were the exuvice or 

 remains of the chrysalis, from whence I suppose the moths had issued, 

 and whose caterpillar had eaten the leaves. MARKWICK. 



It is by no means improbable, notwithstanding the differences in their 



