20G INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



When they were feeding, the noise of their jaws might be 

 mistaken for the sawing of timber. Travellers and people 

 abroad were very much annoyed by their continual flying 

 m their faces; and in a short time the leaves of all the trees 

 for some miles round were so totally consumed by them, 

 that at Midsummer the country wore the aspect of the 

 depth of winter a . 



But the criminals to whom it is principally owing that 

 our groves are sometimes stripped of the green robe of 

 summer, are the various trides of Lepidoptera, myriads 

 of whose caterpillars, in certain seasons, despoil whole 

 districts of their beauty, and our walks of all their plea- 

 sure. In 1731 the oaks in France were terribly de- 

 vastated by the larva of ' Bombyx dispar, F. b , and in 1797 

 many of the pine forests about Bayreuth suffered a simi- 

 lar injury from that of B. Monacha, F. c Noctita brumata, 

 F. is also a fearful enemy to the foliage of almost every 

 kind of tree d . The woods in certain provinces of North 

 America are in some years entirely stripped by that of an- 

 other moth, which eats all kinds of leaves. This happen- 

 ing at a time of the year when the heat is most excessive 

 is attended by fatal consequences. For, being deprived 

 of the shelter of their foliage, whole forests are sometimes 

 entirely dried up and ruined e . — The brown-tail moth, 

 before alluded to, which occasionally bares our hawthorn 

 hedges, has been rendered famous by the alarm it caused 

 to the inhabitants of the vicinity of the metropolis in 1 782, 

 when rewards were offered for collecting the caterpillars, 

 and the churchwardens and overseers of the parishes at- 



a PUlos. Trans, xix. 741. ■> Reaum. i. 387. 



e Wiener Verzeich. 8vo. 7<3, d De Geer, ii. 452. 

 e Kalm's Travels, ii. 7. 



