[354] Pallas's Travels in S. Russia, ii. 241.
[355] Jacquin. Collect. ii. 97.
[356] Deut. xxviii. 39.
[357] Travels, ii. 6.
[358] Collinson in Philos. Trans. liv. x. 65.
[359] Rösel, I. ii. 15.
[360] Reaum. ii. 122.
[361] Mouffet, 160.
[362] Philos. Trans. xix. 741.
[363] Reaum. i. 387. These larvæ were so extremely numerous in 1826 on the limes of the Allée Verte at Brussels, that many of the trees of that noble avenue, though of great age, were nearly deprived of their leaves, and afforded little of the shade which the unusual heat of the summer so urgently required. The moths which in autumn proceeded from them, when in motion towards night, swarmed like bees, and subsequently on the trunk of every tree might be seen scores of females depositing their down-covered patch of eggs. In the Park they were also very abundant; and it may be safely asserted that if one half of the eggs deposited were to be hatched, in 1827 scarcely a leaf would remain in either of these favourite places of public resort. Happily, however, this calamity seems likely to be prevented. Of the vast number of patches of eggs which I saw on almost every tree in the park about the end of September, I could two months afterwards to my no small surprise, discover scarcely one, though the singularity of the fact made me examine closely. For their disappearance I have no doubt the inhabitants of Brussels are indebted to the tit-mouse (Parus), the tree-creeper (Certhia familiaris), and other small birds known to derive part of their food from the eggs of insects, and which abound in the park, where they may be often seen running up and down the trunks of the trees, at once providing their own food and rendering a service to man, which all his powers would be inadequate completely to effect.