2-982-219 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Winter Moths, 1858. 'At the last monthly meeting of the Entomological Society...an interesting conversation arose as to the habits of a caterpillar, which is doing great injury this season to fruit-trees, and the means, if any, of checking its ravages. A visitor from Worcestershire spoke of its prevalence in the neighbourhood of Evesham and Pershore. In the former place the gardens are estimated at 1200 acres, the greater part stocked with plum-trees, having gooseberry and currant trees below them as an undergrowth. Through these gardens broad tracks are leafless and entirely stripped of the fruit which only a fortnight before had given promise of one of the finest crops on record...He thought the damage in that locality alone would be very moderately estimated at £10,000. The Chairman, W. O. Westwood, Esq., and several of the members, identified the caterpillar as the larvae of the Cheimatobia Brumata, or winter moth, a very common pest to fruit-trees, and thought there was no certain remedy but destroying the individual larvae by hand...'. From "Illustrated London News", 1858.