Mr Moggridge confirmed me in this opinion. ‘Some of the tracts on the higher hills,’ said he, ‘have been wholly stripped of their pine forests by a destructive caterpillar, the _Bombyx processiania_; so called because these caterpillars follow each other in long and very strange processions. One goes in front as a leader, two follow close behind, then three, and so on, all hard upon each other. As they are marked brown and black, a procession of them looks like a triangular piece of old carpet on the march with one of the corners foremost—a very queer sort of thing, I assure you. Two or three years ago, when on an expedition among the mountains, I came to the forest of Braus, which was already half destroyed by these voracious caterpillars. Many trees were merely withered stumps, others were dying, and to all appearance the remainder would ere long perish. A good way to get rid of these destructive caterpillars would be to gather and set fire to their nests, which resemble bunches of fine wool placed among the branches of the trees. I suggested to the government that women and children should be employed to pick off the nests, otherwise the country would be denuded; but I was referred to the communal authorities, and they would do nothing. I suppose the woods are all gone by this time. All this comes, of course, from shooting the small birds which are appointed by Nature to keep down the number of insects. There has been, I believe, some formal edict of the French government against killing these birds, but little or no attention is paid to it. The insects which prey on plants have full swing. The time may come when, alarmed for the consequences, the French, like the people of Philadelphia in the United States, may have to import batches of live sparrows from England.’ Taking the road back to Mentone, and leaving Mr Moggridge to pursue some inquiries in the neighbourhood of Roccabruna, I had not an opportunity of following up his remarks on the folly of killing small birds. It is more than a folly. It is a gross public outrage. At Mentone, persons are seen sallying out with guns slung by a belt over their shoulders, on the watch for every stray sparrow, lark, or robin. Shooting these small birds goes on with perfect impunity in the streets and by-ways. The practice is not carried on in a mere spirit of idleness or mischief. The little creatures are killed for the sake of picking up a few miserable sous. The birds are disposed of to shopkeepers, who hang them up in bunches for sale outside their doors; and in due time they make their appearance cooked at the tables-d’hôte: a _menu_ with an _Entrée des alouettes et des rouges-gorges_—in plain English, a dish of roasted larks and robin-redbreasts! Greatly to the credit of the visitors residing last season at the Hôtel Splendide, they protested against the barbarity, and the remonstrance, as under, obtained publicity in the small local journal.[B] ----- Footnote B: