Insect Transformations Volume 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1830 Excerpt: ... render the air pestilential," while, to add to the mischief, "they would destroy every kind of vegetation, and starve the cattle in the fields." "Almost every one," adds Curtis, J. R. f Curtis, Hist, of Brown-tail Moth, 4to. London, 1782. J See Insect Architecture, page 330, for a figure of the nest. ignorant of their history, was under the greatest apprehensions concerning them; so that even prayers were offered up in some churches to deliver the country from the apprehended approaching calar mity." It seems to have been either the same caterpillar, or one very nearly allied to it, probably that of the golden-tail (PorthesiaChrysorrhwa), which in 1731-2, produced a similar alarm in France. Reaumur, on going from Paris to Tours, in September 1730, found every oak, great and small, literally swarming with them, and their leaves parched and brown as if some burning wind had passed over them; for when newly hatched, like the young buff-tips, they only eat one of the membranes of the leaf, and of course the other withers away. These infant legions, under the shelter of their warm nests, survived the winter in such numbers, that they threatened the destruction not only of the fruit-trees, but of the forests, --every tree, as Reaumur says, being over-run with them. The Parliament of Paris thought that ravages so widely extended loudly called for their interference, and they accordingly issued an edict, to compel the people to uncaterpillar (decheniller) the trees; which Reaumur ridiculed as impracticable, at least in the forests. About the middle of May, however, a succession of cold rains produced so much mortality among the caterpillars, that the people were happily released from the edict; for it soon became difficult to find a si...