64 USEFUL BIRDS. 
rences may be gleaned from European records. Samuels 
writes that in Pomerania in 1847 an immense forest that was 
in danger of being utterly ruined by caterpillars was very 
unexpectedly saved by Cuckoos, which, though on the point 
of migrating, established themselves there for some weeks, 
and so thoroughly cleared the trees that the next year “neither 
depredators nor depredations were to be seen.” He also 
speaks of a European outbreak of the gipsy moth (Bombyx 
dispar) in 1848, saying that the hand of man was powerless 
to work off the infliction, but that on the approach of winter 
Titmice and Wrens paid daily visits to the infested trees, 
and before spring had arrived the eggs of dispar were en- 
tirely destroyed. This account agrees with the following 
translation from Altum : — 
In the year 1848 endless numbers of the larvz of Bombyx dispar had 
eaten every leaf from the trees of Count Wodzicki, so that they were 
perfectly bare. In the fall all the branches and limbs were covered 
with the egg clusters. After he had recognized the impracticability of 
it, he gave up all endeavor to remove them by hand, and prepared to 
see his beautiful trees die. Towards winter numerous flocks of Titmice 
and Wrens came daily to the trees. The egg clusters disappeared. In 
the spring twenty pairs of Titmice nested in the garden, and the larva 
plague was noticeably reduced. In the year 1850 the small feathered 
garden police had cleaned his trees, so that he saw them during the 
entire summer in their most beautiful verdure.? 
According to Reaumur, these larvee were so extremely 
numerous on the limes of the Alle verte at Brussels in 1826 
that many of the great trees of that noble avenue were nearly 
defoliated. The moths swarmed like bees in the summer. 
They were also very numerous in the park, and if one-half 
the eggs had hatched in the following spring, probably scarce 
a leaf would have remained in these favorite places of public 
resort. Two months later, however, he could scarcely dis- 
cover a single egg cluster. This happy result was attributed 
to the Titmice and Creepers, which were seen busily running 
up and down the tree trunks.’ 
1 Agricultural Value of Birds, by E. A. Samuels. Annual Report of the 
Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture, 1865-66, pp. 116, 117. 
? Translated from Forstzoologie, II, 1880, p. 324. 
* Reau. i387. Cited by Kirby and Spence in their Introduction to Entomology, 
1857, pp. 117, 118. 
