INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



175 



Tortrix viridana. Our elms have their leaves frequently 

 drilled into holes by the little jumping weevil, Orchestes fagi, 

 and the beech, alder, &c., are partially disfigured by other 

 species of this saltatorial tribe. In France, however, the 

 elms sustain a much more serious injury from the larva of 

 another larger beetle {Galleruca calmariensis), the leaves 

 being sometimes so covered with them, and rendered so brown, 

 as to have the appearance of having been struck by lightning, 

 as was the case -with the fine promenades of Rouen, when I 

 was there in 1836. Cheimatohia hriimata is likewise a fear- 

 ful enemy to the foliage of almost every kind of tree.^ The 

 woods in certain provinces of North America are in some 

 years entirely stripped by the caterpillar of another moth, 

 which eats all kinds of leaves. This happening 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.^ 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 1782, when rewards were olFered 

 for collecting the caterpillars, and the churchwardens and 

 overseers of the parishes attended to see them burnt by 

 bushels. You may have observed perhaps in some cabinets 

 of foreign insects an ant, the head of which is very large in 

 proportion to the size of its body, with a piece of leaf in its 

 mouth many times bigger than itself. These ants, called in 

 Tobago parasol ants {Atta cephalotes), cut circular pieces out 

 of the leaves of various trees and plants, which they carry in 

 their jaws to their nests, and they will strip a tree of its 

 leaves in a night, a circumstance which has been confirmed to 

 me by Captain Hancock.^ Stedman mentions another very 

 large ant, being at least an inch in length, which has the 



1 De Geer, ii. 452. 2 Kalm's Travels, ii. 7. 



3 The same intelligent gentleman related to me, that a person having taken 

 some land at Bahia in the Brazils, he was compelled by these ants, which were 

 so numerous as to render every effort to destroy them ineffectual, to relinquish 

 the occupation of it. Their nests were excavated to the astonishing depth of 

 fourteen feet. Merian, Insect. Sur. 1 8. Sraeathman on Termites, Phil. Trans. 

 Ixxi. 39. note 35. 



