62 Wild Life in Wales 



and the appropriateness of the name requires no comment. 

 Hazel is the prevailing undergrowth in all the woods, and 

 constitutes the larger portion of most of the hedges dividing 

 the inclosures. It forms a poor fence, and affords little 

 protection to stock from the weather, but it lends itself 

 admirably to wattling, and provides everywhere the most 

 beautiful walking-sticks that the heart of countrymen can 

 desire. Nuts are generally a drug in the juvenile market, 

 at harvest time, and may be picked in abundance from the 

 roadside hedges, save, indeed, when, as is so often the case 

 here, those " hedges " happen to be dry-stone walls. To- 

 day, however, the prospects for autumn nutting looked 

 anything but promising. Many of the dingles visited were 

 draped with dingy grey instead of verdure, the leaves having 

 been entirely stripped from most of the underwood, as well 

 as from many of the trees overhead, by an attack of Cater- 

 pillars, such as I hardly remember to have seen surpassed 

 anywhere else. To walk along unfrequented paths through 

 the woods was impossible, with any degree of comfort, 

 owing to the innumerable webs with which the way was 

 beset, and which covered face and clothes with silken cords, 

 and lowered wriggling larvae down one's neck, or up one's 

 sleeves, at every turn. To attempt picking them off was 

 futile, as while one was being captured a dozen others 

 would descend, and coat and collar soon became stained a 

 sort of sickly green with the bodies of those accidentally 

 crushed. Nor was the crowd confined to the one or two 

 usually troublesome species. When beating for caterpillars 

 I have often been annoyed by the numbers of such things 

 as Cheimatobia brumata, that persisted in tumbling into the 

 umbrella, but it was a new experience to find oneself 

 shrinking from the unwelcome attentions of several species 

 which, in bygone years, had often been laboriously searched 

 for, and carefully taken home for rearing when found. 

 Larvae of several kinds of Micro-lepidoptera contributed 

 to the plague ; amongst the Geometrae by far the most 

 abundant were (in addition to the winter moth, C. brumata) 

 Hybernia defoliaria and H. progemmana ; but Selenia illunaria, 

 Crocallis elinguaria y Phigalia pilosaria, and some other species, 



