Moth; caterpillars hanging by their threads, slightly larger than life; rolled oak-leaf.
FIG. 29.—OAK-LEAF ROLLER MOTH, TORTRIX VIRIDANA.
July 3, 1896.
I thank you very much for taking the trouble to send me this good supply of Tabanidæ, and still more especially for the Forest flies. I thought these were all dead, but whilst I was opening the bit of straw in which you pack them so cleverly, they began to tear out headlong—luckily I thought of catching the whole affair together in my closed hand, and then, pouring some chloroform in between my fingers, I got them all safe.
I am very much interested about this poor young woman’s death from poisoning by a fly or insect attack.[[62]] I wish it had been possible to secure the pest, it would be so really useful to make out whether the evil was from the nature of the bite or sting, or whether from ill health or other cause the sufferer was unusually susceptible.
(a) Male; and wingless females. (b) Male; and wingless female; caterpillar.
FIG. 30.—LOOPER CATERPILLARS, (a) WINTER MOTH, CHEIMATOBIA BRUMATA, LINN.; (b) MOTTLED UMBER MOTH, HYBERNIA DEFOLIARIA, LINN.
December 14, 1896.
I am troubling you with a few lines to ask whether you would kindly tell me if the caterpillars which did so very much harm to the oak leafage in your neighbourhood in May, were mostly “loopers”—or the dull, dirty green, or leaden-coloured larvæ of the Tortrix viridana (Oak-leaf roller): you just noted the very great amount of attack to me, in your letter of the 12th of May. I conjecture they would be loopers (? Winter or Mottled Umber moth), for you note that “the moths appeared unusually early, and as soon as the bud began to open, the little caterpillars were upon them,” and I think you would be referring to the early appearance last autumn of the Winter moth. But a note from you would be very valuable. I am wanting to make a really good paper on “Leafage Caterpillars”—people seem not to understand that though the remedies we know of can be used at a paying rate on orchard trees that we can get at, yet, for a mile of avenue “ancestral timber!” or for woods with their trees touching, and no passage for machines, the expense of treatment could not be met.
August 5, 1897.