152 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



rations in May. These leave the cluster of eggs, and advancing 

 to the nearest fork select an eligible camping-ground, and pitch 

 their modest tent. The leaders then depart on a foraging 

 expedition, being very careful to leave behind them a delicate 

 silken clue, that they may find their way home when they have 

 obtained supplies. They soon discover the delicate foliage, and 

 fall ravenously to work, reinforced every moment by stragglers 

 from the rear, directed along the limb by the silken thread of 

 their bolder brethren, which increases in breadth and thickness 

 with every traveller, who is particularly careful to keep up the 

 condition of the highway. In a few hours they are stuffed to 

 repletion, and are obliged to return to camp, and let out their 

 now outgrown uniforms, which they do by splitting them down 

 down the back, and leaving them in a corner of the tent. 

 Having fallen upon a fertile source of supply, their extrava- 

 gance increases, and their tent must be enlarged, while their 

 cast-off garments, and the refuse of their meals are scattered 

 through it in every direction. A few days elapse, and detach- 

 ments are sent out in various directions, with instructions to 

 subsist on the country, and hold the outposts. No rations are 

 furnished them, for supplies are already becoming exhausted, 

 and the energies of the oppressed foliage are taxed to the 

 utmost, while the almost invisible, silken footpath has grown 

 to a broad highway, stretching like a silver ribbon up the 

 branches, and already sending off lanes and by-roads, in various 

 directions, one, in particular, (3f respectable proportions,- down 

 the main trunk from the camp to the spreading lower branches, 

 or, still further, to the flourishing growth of suckers springing 

 up from the roots of the persecuted tree. New camps appear 

 as if by magic in unexpected quarters, and if the approaching 

 aid of the long-handled mop, dipped in kerosene or some other 

 timely preparation be delayed, the crop is doomed. The naked 

 branches, sprinkled with the ashes of departed leaf and blossom, 

 and the ghastly standing tents of the destroying army, ragged 

 and fluttering in the breeze, occupy the place where ruddy and 

 golden fruit would else have gladdened the eye and pocket of 

 the proprietor. But let him know in December the immense 

 significance of those little varnished bulbs of eggs on the 

 slender leafless twigs, so clearly seen against the skj^, and 

 with his ladder and pail, or close-woven basket, he mounts 



