3-028-316 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Pine Bombyx, from "The Universe", 1870. 'A very handsome volume is published by Messrs. Blackie and Son, of Paternoster-row and of Glasgow and Edinburgh, entitled "The Universe; or, the Infinitely Great and the Infinitely Little"...[an] English translation of the excellent French work...by Dr. F. A. Pouchet...The literary and scientific merits of the book, which has been highly commended by M. Amedee Guillemin, by the French critical journalists, and by M. Octave Lacroix..., constitute its principal value...One of the illustrations...represents the larva, cocoons, and butterfly of the Pine Bombyx, or Phalaena, which is so much dreaded by the woodmen of Germany. It especially attacks trees which are seventy or eighty years of age; and there are many instances on record of whole forests of that age being destroyed by the caterpillars of this species...To check the ravages of this formidable enemy, hundreds of men are sometimes assembled, with their tools, and marched in bands all over the country, digging trenches to separate one district of the woodlands from another; or they set fire to the trees infested with the insects, and entire forests are burned, that the foe may not pass on to other parts of the country'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.