45 



deposit an egg, sits on a currant berry, which it pierces with its 

 ovipositor, and pushes the egg into it. The larva, when hatched, 

 feeds on the seeds until about the end of June, when it bores its 

 way out of the fruit and spins a small white cocoon among the dead 

 scales about the buds and fruit spurs, in which it hibernates. In 

 spring it comes out of its winter habitation, bores its way into the 

 buds and also into the young shoots of the currant bushes. ^^ 

 Although hardly so common as /.. nibiella it is fairly well distributed 

 throughout England to as far north as Yorkshire, and is quite 

 capable, in favourable circumstances, of becoming a serious currant 

 bush pest. 



Plutella waculipennis, Crt. ( = criiciferarHiii, Z.), is probably familiar 

 to you all as " The Diamond-back Moth." A narrow-winged 

 species of some five-eighths of an inch in expanse, of a light grey- 

 brown colour with an irregular whitish stripe along the inner 

 margin of its wings, which, when they are folded, gives the appear- 

 ance of a row of diamond-shaped marks along its back, hence its 

 popular name. The eggs are deposited on various species of Cnici- 

 feiae, usually on the backs of the leaves, on which the larvae feed. 

 There are two, and possibly in warm seasons, more broods in the 

 year; it will therefore be seen that the species has ample oppor- 

 tunity to multiply when circumstances are favourable. It is a 

 generally distributed species throughout the country and always 

 fairly common, but occasionally it becomes unusually abundant in 

 some particular area ; and then it is that harm arises, whole crops of 

 turnips or green stuff being ruined by it. To deal with such a pest 

 by artificial means is no easy matter, and various remedies that have 

 been tried have proved only partially successful. Nature's own 

 remedies, a parasitic fly and adverse meteorological conditions are 

 probably our only real protection. 



The Tineas also account for at least two granary pests. Tinea 

 f/ranella, L., a pretty little species of barely half an inch in expanse, 

 with mottled grey-white and dark fuscous wings, has a larva that 

 spins together several grains of corn and feeds upon them. 

 Sitotraija cerealella, Olivier, is a slightly smaller species much 

 resembling, when at rest, both in colour and size, a grain of wheat. 

 It appears to have a rather remarkable life-history. It is said that 

 the moth lays her eggs on the corn grains while they are still in the 

 field, that the larva bores its way into one of them where it feeds 

 on the contents of the grain and thus finds it way into the granary, 

 where it completes its feeding, turns to a pupa, and eventually the 

 moth escapes there. Although wheat appears to be its most favoured 

 food it also attacks barley, rice and maize.^* 



12 Chapman, " Ent. Mo. Mag.," 1892, p. 297. 



13 Douglas, " Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond.," 1850-1, p. 107. 



