82 
ELM. 
recurrence may be easily prevented. For several years I have seen 
the caterpillars regularly straying about towards autumn near lime 
trees in the neighbourhood of Isleworth ; and they have been forwarded 
to me as causing damage in the Eoyal Botanic Gardens, Kew; but I 
have never seen them in such numbers as in the bunches of specimens 
forwarded to me last season. 
The above figure gives a good representation of the full-grown 
caterpillar; the colours are black and yellow, with black head, black 
horny plate above the tail segment, and orange transverse bands on 
each ring. The large moth is easily known by the black or rusty lines 
and figures on a pearly or purplish ground, with a large yellow or 
“ buff-tip ” to the fore wings, whence the moth takes its name; the 
hinder wings are whitish. 
On the 27th of August I received specimens from Mr. T. Cradock, 
of Ockbrook, Derby, which he had taken from a broad-leaved Elm. 
He mentioned, “ when I saw them first, about 12 o’clock this morning, 
they were in hundreds on one large branch, and had entirely stripped 
that one branch of its leaves. It was that which attracted my attention 
to them. On going again this evening, about 6 o’clock, I could only 
find a comparatively small number; there might perhaps have been 
then only four score.” 
The above description is characteristic of the method of attack. 
Sometimes the whole tree is stripped of its leafage, but more commonly 
only the twigs of the higher branches or those outside are stripped; 
and the method which is said to answer best to get rid of the cater¬ 
pillars is to jar the boughs or shake the infested twigs so sharply and 
suddenly as to make the caterpillars fall. Where there is a garden- 
engine at hand or means of throwing water, probably nothing would 
be so effective as good drenchings. 
When the caterpillars are full-fed they creep down the trees, and 
turn to dark brown chrysalids in the dead leaves or rubbish beneath 
the tree or just below the surface of the ground. If these are left 
undisturbed, naturally the moths, which come out from them in the 
following June, fly up to the tree above and start attack again. The 
eggs are usually laid about the middle of the summer in patches on 
the upper side of the leaves. 
Where trees are known to be infested it is serviceable to make a 
circle of gas-lime, or of a ring of wet tar run out on a rough rope of 
hay, or of anything else that the caterpillars will not creep over; thus 
they are confined in a narrow space at the foot of the tree, and if the 
surface of the ground is skimmed off at leisure during the winter the 
chrysalids can be thus readily got rid of. 
The Evergreen Oak has not, so far as I am aware, been noticed as 
one of the trees which they infest; but in the course of last October I 
