260 PYG^RA BrCEPHALA. 



many trees had at Midsummer the appearance they 

 usually present at Christmas, and that they put forth 

 a second growth of leaves. Great fear, which a httle 

 knowledge of Entomology would have dispelled, was 

 entertained by the country people, that when the 

 leaves of the forest trees had been devoured, their 

 potato crops would next have been attacked. The 

 denudation caused by this caterpillar extended from 

 Arklovv along the " sweet vale of Avoca," past " the 

 meeting of the waters," and on to the entrance of 

 the valley of the Seven Churches. I am unable, from 

 the vague accounts I received, to form any idea of 

 the species by which these ravages had been com- 

 mitted. From the manner in which some oak trees in 

 this neighbourhood have been stripped of their leaves, 

 by the caterpUlars of the bufftip moth {Pygara buce- 

 phala), it is possible this more extensive defoliation 

 may have been occasioned by the same insect. 



An instance of destruction caused by another cater- 

 pillar came to my knowledge, near to Portarlington, 

 Queen's County. The insect destroyer in this case 

 was the larva of a moth, not merely rare, but, so far 

 as I have been able to ascertain, unrecorded, as be- 

 long to our Irish Fauna, — I mean the goat-moth 

 (Cossifs Ugniperdci) . It was discovered at Woodbrook, 

 the seat of Major Chetwood, in 1830. Some trees 

 in the demesne had assumed an unhealthy appear- 



