204- General Notices. 



be one most deserving of purchase by gardeners, from both the 

 excellence and cheapness of it. We cannot say how long it 

 may be before the remaining numbers are published, but think 

 the two which are published, on " Structural Botany," too im- 

 portant to our friends to remain unnotified to them until the 

 rest shall have been published. Eighty woodcuts are given in 

 the two numbers on " Structural Botany." 



A Treatise 071 the Acacia Tree (Robinm), &c., by W. Withers 

 of Holt, Norfolk ; to which will be added, Observations on 

 Planting and Pruning, by John Sanders, is in preparation. It 

 will form one volume, 8vo, price \l. 



A Complete Account of the Hop, with an Essay on Blight in 

 Corn Crops, by E. J. Lance, will shordy be published, price 

 3s. 6W. 



MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE. 



Art. I. General Notices. 



The Economy of the little grey Moth {Yponomeiita padella). — No insect 

 makes greater havoc of our whitethorn hedges and apple trees [and various 

 other trees], than the little grey moth ( Yponomeuta padella Latreille^. Wher- 

 ever the caterpillars of this insect seat themselves, they appear to be con- 

 gregated in vast numbers : every spray is covered. The leaves vanish before 

 them ; so that by midsummer, not only single trees, but whole orchards, and 

 entire hedges from end to end, are completely defoliated. Their depredations 

 cease when their change into the chrysalis [pupa] state takes place, leaving 

 the trees covered with the webs (or, rather, silky threads), by which they trans- 

 port [the caterpillars had transported] themselves from place to place; and 

 every leaf shrivelled, as if scorched by fire. — J. Main, in IX. 570, 571. 



These effects are familiarly known to many, but not so, or less so, have 

 hitherto been the following points in the insect's economy : the time and place 

 in which the mother moth deposits her eggs, the time at which the caterpillars 

 are hatched from the eggs, and their course of feeding from the time of being 

 hatched to the time at which the effects of their ravages command our ob- 

 servation of them. These points have been elucidated by the investigations 

 of the late Mr. E. W. Lewis, and by his brother, Mr. R. H. Lewis. From a 

 communication on this subject by the latter gentleman, published in the 

 Traoisactions of the Entomological Society of London, we quote the following 

 particulars: — " The mother moth deposits her eggs in the preceding year, 

 generally on the small twigs, and chiefly on their under surface, in a circular 

 patch about i^ line in diameter, which she covers over with a strong gluten, 

 at first of a pale yellow, but which is afterwards, by the action of the atmo- 

 sphere and rain, changed to a dark brown, very closely resembling the bark of 

 the tree, and is then very difficult to be distinguished from it. The eggs 

 hatch early in the autumn (the exact time I did not ascertain : I found them 

 hatched the beginning of October), and the larvae remain in confinement 

 during the whole winter, under the covering which is formed by the gluten 

 and egg-shells. If we now I'aise up one of these excrescences, we shall find it 

 hollow inside, and containing two dozen or more larvae, of a pale yellow 

 colour, with the head and a corneous plate on the first segment black, and 

 about a half or two thirds of a line long. In these receptacles they increase 

 somewhat in size : the bark of the tree beneath is moist and green, but 

 whether, or in what manner, they derive nourishment from it I am at a loss 

 to say. 



