CATERPILLAR MENACE

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20260, 31 July 1937, Page 27 (Supplement)

CATERPILLAR MENACE

INVASION op: SCOTLAND. FARM LANDB DEVASTATED. (Times Air Mail Service.) LONDON, July 4. Caterpillars are in the news, comments Reynolds Journal. In the course of a few days they have stripped bare the trees of Amsterdam; devastated wide areas of Scottish farmland; and compelled the farmers of Norfolk and Suffolk to take extensive precautions to keep them out of their fields. In Scotland the chief areas affected are the Ochil distriot of Perthshire, the Denny and Campsle districts of Stirlingshire, the Loch Lomond district, and the new Cumnock district of Ayrshire. Moving at the rate of about a mile a day, the Immense swarms of caterpillars, the grub of the antler moth, eat the grass bare, the ground over, whioh they have passed appearing as though It had been burnt. There is a clash of opinion between agricultural scientists, who state that the roots of grasses are not destroyed, and farmers, who aver that in many places the roots have been completely eaten. Wind Helps. In some parts of the country a very high wind last week helped to mitigate the problem. The caterpillars, having reached the chrysalis stage, were light and brittle, so that the wind blew them away and destroyed them. The danger is now on the wane. Pupation—the chrysalis stage—is in progress in many parts, and within the next two weeks the caterpillars will have taken wings. Experts believe that the eggs from which the plague developed were scattered over Scotland last autumn. Then, they say, there must have been an invasion of moths driven from some foreign land by abnormal activities among the natural enemies of the species. Another view Is that the outbreak of the pest is the result of a season in which much snow has lain on the hills until late spring or early summer, protecting the young caterpillars. Fruit Trees Attacked. In Norfolk and Suffolk the pests have attacked fruit trees, and bonfires •iave been used In an effort to keep I hem from the field crops. Fields of ! threatened. I Alt efforts to stamp out the “cater- : pillar invasion” of Amsterdam have j in the city has been stripped, and the | caterpillars have even penetrated . houses near the canals.