96 



of crushed caterpillars, and from this mass an unendurable 

 stench arose. This statement is vouched to be substantially 

 true by one of the Government Entomological Assistants sent 

 to verify the case.^ Fortunately for us, we seldom, or perhaps 

 never, in this country get such devastating swarms of insect 

 life. We get mischief enough from the turnip-fly and the 

 hop-fly, whilst Cheiniatobia brumata often destroys a 

 large quantity of our fruit crops. Our gooseberries too get 

 defoliated by the ravenous jaws of Nematus ribesii, and in 

 consequence, they severely injure, some years, our supply of 

 that useful fruit ; yet, on the whole, we in England possibly 

 suffer less from insect ravages than most countries, and for 

 which we have much to be thankful for. I once saw a large 

 wooded tract of country in the Tilgate district, defoliated by 

 larvae of several species of lepidoptera ; the large oaks were 

 eaten bare of leaf, only the midribs of the leaves remaining. 

 It was indeed a curious sight in midsummer, to see the trees 

 almost as bare as midwinter, as you stood quietly under the 

 trees, the constant falling of frass on the dry herbage beneath 

 was like the pattering of rain-drops. Such sights with us 

 are happily extremely rare. 



I feel. Gentlemen, that I shall be trying your patience, so 

 wil.l only mention one more of our species, that never with us 

 figures as an injurious insect, viz., Psilura monacha. But on 

 the Continent the " Nun," so called, is a most destructive 

 creature. In Germany, Austria, Bohemia, etc., its ravages are 

 enormous. In i8gi, in Bohemia alone, this species is credited 

 with destroying 20,000 acres of spruce-fir ; and in Germany 

 many thousand square miles of forest-land were seriously 

 injured by the same moth. So, Gentlemen, you see the 

 raison d'etre of establishing Government Entomological 

 officials, to find out, when possible, the best means of 

 arresting these pests. 



The entomological season of i8gi has been of a most peculiar 

 character ; following an exceptionally severe winter, we had 



^ See Insect Life, vol. iii., pp. 477-8, where it is also stated that the trains are 

 stopped almost yearly from the same causes, and that the insects most involved 

 are the "Army-worm," our Heliothis arniigera, the Tent-caterpillar, and various 

 migratory locusts. 



