TRAN SAGT 10 N S. ON THE 1936 DEFOLIATION AT BECCLES. B Y ERNEST T .
GOLDSMITH.
THE outstanding event of local Natural Science during the past year undoubtedly has been the phenomenal ravages wrought by a Hyponomeuta-moth along the River Waveney, which divides our County f r o m Norfolk. Five or six years ago small companies of larvae, presumably of the present species, had been noticed on willows in this vicinity, where they were found at Worlingham to have increased to no small extent last year : which is all previously ascertained of the matter in Suffolk. On 26 J u n e 1936 I heard that certain willows, j u s t off the C o m m o n at Beccles, were presenting an unusual appearance, so at once investigated and found that twenty or thirty of these trees, Salix alba, L i n n . , were already covered f r o m their tops by festoons of whitish-grey web, like hoar-frost, throughout including the trunk and even herbage round their foot." Within the webs were swarming myriads of caterpillars about three-quarters of an inch in length, of a dirty grey colour and smooth with black lateral dots : evidently s o m e kind of Micro-moth. T h e y had eaten every vestige of willow-leaf; and by 15 J u l y practically every tree bordering the Waveney at and near Beccles seemed as though grievously blighted, their trunks coated in filmy web, totally marring the river's beauty. B y 13 J u l y the larva; had congregated into great bundles, each as large as a thrush's-nest, on the trees : an unprecedented and ghastlv sight, which f r o m a distance looked as though the whole were frozen to death in another I c e A g e . By 19 J u l y pupation h a d very generallv taken place, and imagines began to emerge on 26th of that month. N o r is the infestation restricted to local l i m i t s ; I find it extends along the river-marshes towards both L o w e s t o f t a n d and Y a r m o u t h (cf E n t o m . 1936, p. 217). Our Member, M r . E . R. L o n g in J u l y noted multitudes of these caterpillars by the river near Worlingham church, where also they formed loathsome masses of web on the willows and even horrid squirming l u m p s of crawling life at their base ; they both live and subsequently p u p a t e within the web. M r . Elfis records more larva; at Burgh S t . Peter church in the Norfolk marshes ;