A PLAGUE OF CATERPILARS.

Shannon News, 27 August 1926, Page 3

A PLAGUE OF CATERPILARS.

♦— THOUSANDS DROP FROM TREES IN,HYDE PARK. LONDON! uly 12. Hyde Park is -experiencing -a plague of caterpillars. Last evening thousands of them were dropping from the trees oil to the chairs o,r crawling up and down the railings and over the footpaths. During the day the park keepers were busy knocking the caterpillars off chairs and railings and sweeping them up, but they found it difficult to keep pace with the- enemy. A park official said:—“We spray the trees, but that does not seem to do much good. Many of the trees in the park have not any leaves left — they have all been eaten by the caterpillars. A curious thing is that the visitors do not seem to take any notice of them. We move the chairs away from the trees, but as soon as people want to sit down they carry them back again into the shade and brave the caterpillars. The sunshine and' warmth, after a spelL of dampness, has had the effect of producing such myriads of winged insects that river anglers are bemoaning the reluctance of the fish to feed from anything else than the plenitude of natural prey. Billions of summer flies must have been concentrated yesterday in almost every mile -of the Thames. Just before dusk at places like Twickenham, Richmond, Chiswick and Hammersmith, the insects hovered round the trees and bushes on the river banks in such dense swarms that the impression was given that clouds of grey smoke were issuing from the branches and leaves. Watermen stated that they could not recall the fly pest having been so intense for a quarter of a century.