ANTLER MOTH. 13 



"universally common."* But though the presence of the species is 

 thus widespread, the remarkable point about it is the enormous 

 numbers in which for no (apparently) known reason the infestation 

 appears from time to time, especially in mountainous districts, or on 

 upland pastures ; so that the vast numbers of caterpillars appearing 

 suddenly after their winter rest, and attacking everything suitable for 

 their food over an area of several miles, is not only a serious scourge, 

 but an exceeding astonishment popularly. 



Numbers of these attacks, both on the Continent of Europe and in 

 this country, are on record, from the time of Linnaeus onward ; but 

 previously to this great outbreak of 1894 only two special appearances 

 have come under my own notice. These were the attack of the cater- 

 pillars in June of 1884, extending over an area of about ten miles of 

 Glamorganshire, lying west of the Khonda Valley ; and that of the 

 summer of 1885, in Selkirkshire, when the caterpillars did much mis- 

 chief on the hill-pastures of Ettrick and Yarrow. The Scottish attack 

 of the past season extended over a far greater area of ground than the 

 two above mentioned. 



Generally speaking, the sudden and unaccountable (or at least un- 

 accounted for) appearance of these devastating hordes, and presently 

 their disappearance without notable recurrence of the widespread 

 mischief on the same area in the following season, have been remark- 

 able features of the attacks. But in that of the past season it will be 

 seen from the observations that presence of the Antler Moths had been 

 remarked in most unusual numbers — " extraordinary swarms" — over 

 a part at least of the subsequently attacked district, and also, towards 

 the end of the feeding-time of the caterpillars, various kinds of internal 

 diseases or parasitic attacks, as of " flacherie," threadworms, dipterous 

 maggots, &c., were found present ; and of the caterpillars kept in large 

 numbers under observation many did not turn to chrysalids, and of 

 such as did many did not produce moths, 



The Antler Moth is of the size figured on p. 12, and takes its name 

 from the pale, somewhat antler-like, markings on the brown colour of 

 the fore wings ; the hinder wings are of a brown or greyish brown. 

 They appear in July or the latter part of the summer, or in the 

 autumn, and each moth lays a large number of eggs ; these, it is 

 stated, are as many as two hundred, and are laid in little heaps in the 

 ground, or at the base of the grass leaves and stems, on which the 

 caterpillars feed. These eggs soon hatch, and the regular course f of 



* "Catalogue of the Lepidoptera of Ireland," by W. F. de Vismes Kane, 

 . ' Entomologist,' Sept. 1894, p. 264. 



+ In Kollar's Insects the larva is mentioned as in existence in autumn, and 

 hybernating in winter. Dr. Taschenberg, in his ' Praktische Insektenkunde,' 

 notes that before the caterpillars fall into their ivinter sleep they change their skins 



