274 



THE GYPSY MOTH. 



moth ; but it is impossible to be quite sure what insects may 

 have been referred to in these old accounts for the reason 

 that only local common names were used before 1758, when 

 Linn^us introduced the custom of giving a scientific name 

 to each insect, by which it should be known in all countries. 



In a work entitled * ' Beschreibung von allerlei Insecten in 

 Teutschland," by J. L. Frisch, published in Berlin, 1720, 

 Vol. I, page 14, is a brief notice of a garden and forest 

 caterpillar which is evidently the gypsy moth. Plate HI 

 represents a male, a female laying her eggs, a caterpillar, 

 the anterior and posterior ends of a caterpillar and a male 

 antenna. He writes of this insect as follows: "This cat- 

 erpillar, in the third part of the copper-plate, Fig. 1, is 

 called Bunt-Knopffig, on account of the light violet-blue 

 and purple-red tubercles on its back, and also Garten und 

 Forstraupe (garden and forest caterpillar), because it not 

 only destroys all the leaves of the fruit-bearing trees of the 

 orchard, but also does not hesitate to attack forest trees, 

 especially the oaks, on which it is found every year. In this 

 year, 1720, this caterpillar entirely stripped every tree of 

 the double row of lindens along the road from Neustadt to 

 Berlin." In the appendix to this work, published later, is a 

 statement that a certain injurious caterpillar (possibly the 

 gypsy moth), in 1721 and 1722, ravaged not only the fruit 

 trees throughout Germany, but also oaks and other forest 

 trees, and even killed many of them. 



Thomas Brown, in the " Book of Butterflies," Yol. II, page 

 52, published in London in 1832, states that in 1731 the 

 caterpillars of the gypsy moth committed terrible havoc 

 among the cork oaks of France. 



In 1761, J. C. Schaeflfer published a work on the gypsy 

 moth, the first edition of which appeared in 1752. He states 

 that in this last year the trees in the orchards and gardens, 

 the bushes in the fields, and even whole forests, not only in 

 many places in Saxony but also in Altenburg, Leitz, Naum- 

 burg, Sangerhausen and many other regions, were entirely 

 stripped of their leaves. The branches and twigs were 

 densely covered with caterpillars, instead of leaves, and they 

 also crawled over the ground in great numbers. An exam- 

 ination proved that they all belonged to this one species, and 



