27 



Fortunately the gravity of the subject has not been over-looked, 

 even in this 'country, and we have had for many years past many 

 ardent workers, both professional and amateur, devoting their 

 attention to working out the life-histories of our insect pests and 

 devising methods for combating their ravages, it therefore behoves 

 us, one'^and all, to take advantage of the information that they so 

 willingly give us of the result of their labours, to keep in check our 

 insect'enemies. A few fruit trees, a little garden patch, even an 

 allotment, if left to run wild for a few years, may become a nursery 

 for all sorts of noxious insects and thus in due course become the 

 means of infecting a whole neighl)oarhood with them. 



All orders of insects contribute their quota to this wholesale 

 destruction, and although the Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), 

 the group that we are now considering, are by no means the chief 

 offenders, they do a very considerable amount of damage to our 

 crops, in our warehouses, even in our homes ; turn which way we will 

 we seem never to be free from their ravages. Not that the perfect 

 insect, the actual butterfly or moth does any damage, the construct- 

 ion of its mouth-parts is unsuitable for attack upon any hard sub- 

 stance, the more or less lengthy proboscis with which it is furnished 

 being suitable only for feeding upon the nectar of flowers and 

 simiTar more or less liquid forms of diet. Indeed in the imago stage 

 they are a real benefit, in that by their method of feeding they 

 assist in the fertilization of flowers. But it is in the larval (or 

 caterpillar) stage, the only stage in which real growth is attained, 

 that they cause damage. The larval mouth is furnished with hard 

 chitinous mandibles, so hard that no vegetable substance appears to 

 be proof against their attack, fruit, roots, even the hard wood of 

 trees, grain, fur, feathers, cloth and numerous other substances all 

 come within their diet and are liable to damage from their attack. 



Anyone who has grown a patch of cabbages must in some years 

 have gazed askance at rows of skeletons, where nice healthy cabbages 

 ouoht^to have stood, plants of which nothing but the mid-ribs and 

 lai^er veins alone remained, the whole of the soft tissues of the leaves 

 havino^ been gnawn away. This is the work of the larva of Fiens 

 brassicae, L. The butterfly lays its eggs on the leaves of the cabbages, 

 little yellowish upright eggs sprinkled all over the leaves ; in a few 

 clays they hatch and the little larvae commence to feed upon the 

 cuticle of the leaf their depredations for a time being hardly 

 noticeable, but suddenly, after several changes of skin, they develop 

 marvellous appetites and the reduction of a fine healthy cabbage to 

 a mere skeleton is the work of but a few days. If our cabbage 

 patch happened to be a small one we might have saved the situation 

 by hand-picking the eggs before they batched, but once the 

 larvae are out they are not easy to deal with, for in their younger 

 stages they are not readily seen, and when large enough to be easily 

 noticeable they have already committed the bulk of the damage. 



