THE ENTOMOLOGIST’S WEEKLY INTELLIGENCER. 
23 
papers, and is interesting as showing the 
amount of ignorance in Entomology of 
the general public : — 
“ Disease in the French Oak. — It is not 
our own English oak only that is suf- 
fering from disease. The oak trees in 
the French forests have been attacked 
this year by a strange disease. They are 
covered from the top branches to the 
roots with a species of caterpallar, which 
forms a coating some inches thick, and in 
some localities the municipal authorities 
have published a notice forbidding child- 
ren to enter the woods, as these insects, at 
the approach of a human being, cover the 
face, neck and body ; and their bite, it 
is said, has in many instances produced 
fever.” 
It would take too much of your space 
to go through the paragraph critically; 
but it will be sufficient to give the 
real foundation for this extraordinary 
tale. 
The oak trees in France are in some 
seasons infested with the larvae of the 
Procession Moth ( Bombyx processionea) ; 
their habit is to feed during the night, 
and in the day they cluster together on 
the trunks of the trees, spinning a slight 
web to cover the little colony: at night 
they leave their web, and ascend the tree 
in procession. In 1859, in the forest of 
Vincennes, I saw heaps of the cast-off 
skins at the roots of the trees : this year 
they have not been so abundant. In the 
forest of Meudon I met with several 
colonies of them, and brought a few to 
England with me, to watch their habits ; 
they clustered together in the breeding- 
cage during the day, and in the evening, 
much to the amusement of myself and 
some entomological friends, formed a 
procession round the box to their 
food, keeping in exact line like a 
row of policemen : this took place every 
night at a certain time till they spun 
up. 
Whilst I was examining one of these 
little colonies at Meudon, one of the 
keepers came up to see what I was 
doing, and we entered into conversation. 
He told me that some seasons this larva 
was very destructive, and that children 
are employed to examine the trunks of 
the trees during the day, and collect all 
they can, and are paid by the number of 
litres they collected. It is quite possible 
that children thus employed may have 
got their hands covered with the hairs of 
these creatures, and been annoyed with 
a sort of nettle-rash, like that produced 
by handling the larvae of the Gold-tail 
or Lasiocampa Quercus, and thus give 
a sort of foundation to the won- 
derful account published in the news- 
papers. 
Yours truly, 
J. C. de-Botham 
(as I am called in France). 
Manchester, 
September 16, 1860. 
The new List of British Hemiptera . — 
The following errata occur in the List 
of Hemiptera recently published : — 
Page 38, sp. 502, globus is misprinted 
globus ; sp. 505, lurida is misprinted 
livida. 
Page 48, sp. 664 is identical with sp. 
687, and should be erased. 
Page 52, sp. 718, lectularia is mis- 
printed betularia. — F. Walkeb, Grove , 
Highgate ; October 13, 1860. 
[Is not the reference to Curtis’s 
figure, in the last-named species, also 
erroneous ?] 
