Insects, 337 



caterpillar, which had been unknown to the present generation, until two or three 

 years before. In one instance which I particularly noticed, the insects apparently 

 commenced operations from near the hedge, and marched regularly across the field, 

 not leaving the smallest particle of green upon the turnips behind them, and eating en- 

 I tirely even into the crown of the root, which consequently did not shoot again. After 

 thus destroying a certain portion of the crop, they suddenly stopped, and the remain- 

 der of the crop was uninjured. The annoyance from these insects lasted, it may be 

 remembered, a very few years, and then ceased, as it had begun, all at once. I can 

 recollect other instances of the kind. Several years before, the whitethorn hedges of 

 a particular district (many miles in extent), which are there very numerous, and very 

 neatly maintained, were infested by a peculiar species of caterpillar to such a degree, 

 that by the time the vermin were ready to change, not a single green leaf remained, 

 unless a bramble or other plant protruded through the hedge, since they would touch 

 nothing but whitethorn. Numerous remedies were tried, but produced no perceptible 

 diminution of the insects, until, after thus prevailing three or four years, they suddenly 

 vanished, and where myriads formerly existed, hardly one could be found. The ca- 

 terpillars, when changing, suspended themselves in clusters within a web, and, previ- 

 ously to their disappearance, I discovered that these clusters were almost invariably 

 filled with maggots, which had penetrated the cases of the aurelia and devoured them. 

 The maggots greatly resembled those found in flesh, only being smaller. About the 

 same period the oaks in the district suffered a similar visitation, though not for so 

 many years; the tender leaves being so completely destroyed, that the trees resumed 

 their wintry aspect. I think this moth, when it ceased to be very abundant, did not 

 disappear so completely as the preceding. Also in the year 1840, if I recollect rightly, 

 the farmers in some parts of Oxfordshire and Berkshire, received great injury from the 

 immense multitudes of cockchafer grubs, which attacked their turnips, completely de- 

 vouring the roots, and gradually extending over the fields, to the total destruction of 

 the crops. A farmer, one of the suff'erers, told me, that he had found as many as (I 

 think) seventeen or eighteen grubs under a single turnip ; and I witnessed that it was 

 impossible to pull up one, without discovering a large number of the vermin in and 

 beneath it. How abundant the mature cockchafers had been previously, and were af- 

 terwards, I am not aware ; but the ravages of the larvae to such a serious amount were 

 confined, I believe, to the season I have alluded to. — Arthur Hussey ; Rottingdeane^ 

 Sussex, July 22, 1843. 



Note on the blighted appearance of the Oaks, Src. I would refer your correspondent 

 the Rev. F. O. Morris (Zool. 272), to a note of mine in ' The Entomologist' (Entom. 

 157), where I have stated what J saw had been done to the oaks and beeches in the 

 New Forest ; and I have no doubt that the blighted appearance of the oak and ash 

 trees in Yorkshire proceeded from a similar cause. — /. W. Douglas ; 6, Grenville Ter- 

 race, Coburg Road, Kent Road, September, 1843. 



" Orchestes Quercus. During a visit to the New Forest from the 8th to the 13th 

 of June, I was struck with the brown appearance of the oaks; and on examination I 

 found that nearly every leaf contained between its cuticles a larva of an elongate, flat- 

 tened form, which had eaten the parenchyma of half the leaf, and by destroying its vi- 

 tality made it seem as if it had been scorched. About the concavity formed by the 

 separation of the upper and under skins of the leaf, the larvsB wriggled with much ac- 

 tivity when shaken or disturbed. In the majority of the leaves which I examined, the 

 larvae had become pupae, and in a few days pupae only were to be found. These re- 



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