Anniversary Address. 15 



fire, I preserved a few, one of which, when compared with those 

 that visited the North Shore, appeared to be the same. Some 

 witless critic, who took exception to my remark that I had 

 " counted more than 80,000," when I ought perhaps to have said 

 " calculated,' 1 must have been afterwards consoled by Mr. Scott's 

 statement, that in one paddock on the Hunter, some years since, 

 they were so numerous that he " calculated " there were at least 

 21,780,000. Mr. Scott very properly points out the appalling 

 destruction these creatures are calculated to produce, when each 

 pair has a progeny of 80,000. 



My chief object in now introducing this subject, is to state 

 that last year, and even during this, several of these moths have 

 been seen by me in a state of activity, and numbers have been 

 destroyed in the building before infested by them ; and therefore* 

 the probability is, that we shall have, in addition to the floods 

 and drought, and other varieties of trials of the patience of 

 cultivators of fields and gardens, to look forward to a future visita- 

 tion from Agroiis vastator. A further reason for this notice is, that 

 the Agrotis in question was assumed by me to be identical with the 

 Bugong moth first brought into notice by Dr. Bennett, and on 

 which the aboriginals used to feast luxuriantly. But it is now 

 stated that the Agrotis vastator is not the Bugong moth, which is 

 probably Oxycanus fuscomaculatus, belonging to the family 

 Htpialidce, of the tribe Bombysites. 



Having so recently had the vegetable products of the colony 

 brought conspicuously into consideration by the Annual meeting 

 of the Horticultural, and the magnificent Exhibition of the Agri- 

 cultural Society, it may not be out of place to remind those con- 

 cerned that there is a vastator preparing, in due time, to send 

 forth it legions to destroy fruit blossoms and devour the grass of 

 the field. 



From modern Agriculture to Palseophytology is an easy traverse 

 through the agency of Botany. One fact seems of sufficient 

 importance to detain us a moment. 



The question of the age of the earliest deposits bearing evidence 

 of ancient life is one that has occupied not only the Naturalist 

 but the Theologian with many wild conjectures. After Hugh 

 Miller had drawn up his parallel of epochs and days in one of 



