130 MY NATURE NOTEBOOK. 



preference on the outer leaves of their food plant, so 

 that you can see them yards off. Yet it was for rescue 

 from this easily discovered and easily destroyed in- 

 sect that, in 1792, prayers were publicly offered up in 

 the churches of London ; and in one day the church- 

 wardens, overseers, and beadle of Clapham officially 

 witnessed the burning of fourscore bushels of the 

 caterpillars and their webs, which the poor had been 

 employed to collect at the rate of one shilling a 

 bushel. 



THE SATIN MOTH. 



At many of our southern seaside places might be 

 seen, in 1902, how our English climate ordinarily nips 

 the chances of such plagues in the bud. Some of the 

 roads are usually planted with avenues of young 

 abeles and other trees, upon which the satin moths 

 near relatives of the brown-tails, but lacking the 

 brown tuft at the tail, and having a semi-transparent 

 sheen upon their white wings, which suggests their 

 name had prospered exceedingly during the last 

 few seasons. This year, however, an opportune storm 

 of wind, with a deluge of rain, washed the moths off 

 the trees, and you could see them drowning by scores 

 in the gutters. Still, vast numbers survived, and on 

 most of the poplar trunks you could observe the white 

 wafer-like patches of their eggs. Unlike its relatives, 

 the brown-tail and gold-tail moths, which cover their 

 eggs with the long hairs plucked from their own tails 

 indeed, when a female has finished laying she has 

 no tail left the satin moth covers hers with a secre- 

 tion which dries into a white papery stuff. As the 



