A. W. Rymer Roberts 125 



tion in which wireworms are found in large numbers is grass-land, which 

 has been laid down a considerable time. They may be present in arable 

 land, but their number seems to bear a direct relationship to the state 

 of cultivation of the land, making allowance for a ley of "seeds" or 

 clover which will occur in the rotation. 



It is concluded therefore that the eggs are laid about the roots of 

 grasses and that such an environment is only provided by grass- or 

 waste-land, a temporary ley (after which the wireworms found should 

 be nearly of a size) or badly cultivated land on which couch or other 

 grass weeds have been allowed to multiply. 



The Larva. 



No difficulty was experienced in hatching the young larvae, by 

 allowing the ova to remain either on damp soil or moss. Possibly, how- 

 ever, there would have been trouble from desiccation, as Adrianov 

 found, if care had not been used to supply a certain amount of moisture. 

 The young larvae, when first hatched, at once make their way down- 

 wards into the soil and, as in the case of older larvae, appear to dislike a 

 strong light. Except in pots where they have been known to be present, 

 they have not been found in the soil and it is doubtful whether larvae, 

 at least those of lineatus, obscurus or sputator, are ever found by farmers 

 or gardeners in their first year of life. They are extremely small up to 

 this age; they are pale in colour and possibly their food is not of quite 

 the same nature as that of older larvae, so that there seems sufficient 

 reason for their being overlooked. 



Vassiliev(23) fed young larvae, up to a month or six weeks old, on 

 rotten dung, while Adrianov found pieces of beetroot and carrot eaten 

 to some extent and also found evidence of the larvae having eaten into 

 the small roots of rye and wheat. In my own investigations young 

 larvae have been kept for some weeks in tubes containing turfy soil and 

 the gut, which is plainly visible through the cuticle, was found to be 

 filled with a dark brown substance, evidently partially-decomposed 

 vegetable matter. In the same way also larvae, kept in moss, have been 

 found to have the gut filled with a green substance, the chlorophyll 

 of the moss on which they had fed. 



Some slight evidence of potato having been eaten was obtained, 

 but it was not quite satisfactory and certainly larvae in the first instar 

 have not been discovered boring tunnels into potato tubers in the 

 manner of the older larvae. Tests made with growing barley at the end 

 of the first, and during the second, instar afforded no positive evidence 



