64 TRANSACTIONS OF THE HINGHAM 
Bavaria and other German States, have sought by various expedients to 
arrest, if possible, this fearful evil. But thus far all their efforts have 
been almost as unavailing as would be the attempt to bale out the sea. 
Let me give you one striking instance, all the facts of which are well 
authenticated, and which will serve to teach us several very important 
lessons as well as afford a remarkable illustration of the enormous 
amount of destruction that follows the unchecked development of certain 
kinds of insects. I have spoken of the night butterfly of Europe, 
called also the monne, or nun. ‘The miller, as its name implies, is a 
nocturnal insect, and is, therefore, one not easy to capture. It is im- 
mensely productive, and its larvee feed upon the foliage of forest trees, 
where, unchecked, they increase very rapidly, completely strip these 
trees of their foliage, prevent their growth, and in a second season 
entirely destroy the trees thus twice denuded. Forests thus destroyed are 
comparatively valueless, and the losses occasioned are at times immense. 
In the year 1852, the larve of this night butterfly appeared in count- 
less swarms in all the forests of Lithuania, East Prussia, Nassau and 
Poland, as also in the Swalger districts of the Rothebude forests. Early 
in the month of July, the moths made their first appearance in masses 
that resembled white clouds. The forests looked as if they were covered 
with snow. ‘They were comparatively new to these regions, and came 
to them from the south where ‘ the forests had been burned.” Here and 
there attempts were made to meet the impending calamity, the terrible 
meaning of which the proprietors but too well understood. In the 
single forest of Rothebude, between the 8th of August and the follow- 
ing May, there were collected and destroyed, by computation, one 
hundred and fifty millions of the eggs of this insect, and fifteen hundred 
millions of the male moths, At an enormous expenditure, the trunks 
of the trees were scraped for the eggs, and liberal rewards were paid for 
both eggs and moths by the proprietors, but all invain. They were not 
able to collect much more than half the eggs, and before the 12th of July, 
five hundred acres of pines had been eaten bare, and the trees died. In 
spite of almost superhuman efforts to arrest them, the butterflies of 
the next generation were more numerous than before, and their eges 
covered entire trunks of the forest trees. Before the end of July, all 
but about three thousand acres in the entire district had been eaten bare 
and killed, and by the end of June, 1855, over seven thousand acres of 
pine land had been completely killed, and three thousand more rendered 
