THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 105 
processions across the garden-path: unfortunately, I never 
counted how many there were in these processions, but I 
think I shall be within the mark when I say that they ranged 
from twenty to one hundred, all marching in admirable order. 
I have also seen them walking three and four abreast, but not 
often. I then discovered that their small hairs came off when 
they were handled, and occasioned me severe irritation, which 
in the course of a few hours became very painful, producing 
something like the effects of a stinging-nettle, namely, small 
white spots on the skin, which continued for about forty-eight 
hours afterwards. In addition to C. pityocampa I found one 
specimen of another larva, which also possessed this irritating 
power: itis about two and a half inches long, of a mahogany 
colour, sprinkled rather sparingly with grayish blue fine hairs 
all along the back; on the 3rd and 4th segments it has 
crests of deep blue hairs, longer than the others, extending 
on either side almost to the spiracles; partly on the 8th and 
partly on the 9th segments it has the figure of a minute 
butterfly of the swallow-tail type, also of grayish blue, and 
measuring a quarter of an inch across; it has legs on the 2nd, 
3rd and 4th segments, and claspers on the 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th 
and last segments. After preserving this larva my wrists and 
round the lower part of my eyes were covered with minute 
blisters, which caused me great irritation ; I took the precau- 
tion to wear gloves, so that my hands did not suffer.—H. 
Wittich ; 6, Lansdown Cottages, Dalston, April 20, 1874. 
The Colorado Potato Bug.—Panic is a cherished “ Insti- 
tution” among us dauntless Britons,—“ Hearts of Oak,” as 
we call ourselves. This bugbear takes a variety of forms: 
sometimes it is a Napoleon, then a ghost, then, presto! it is 
a comet, anon an invisible fungus, Peronospora infestans ; 
_ then a second Napoleon, then a bottle-nosed whale, then a 
coal famine, and now a potato bug. A few, a very few, in- 
cline to investigate: they exclaim, ‘‘ We must look into this 
matter ;” but their “lookings into” are confined to the penny- 
a-lining columns of the ‘Telegraph’ and ‘Times, and the 
penny-a-liners adopt a florid and fluent, but vague, style, in 
order to extend the panic: if they succeed in getting up a 
deputation to a President of the Board of Trade, or to a 
Chancellor of the Exchequer, so much the better; it hurts 
no one, and brings grist to their mill. Under great pressure, 
P 
