42 



THE REPORT OF THE 



[ No. 19 



Fig. 5. 



NOTES ON THE SEASON OF 1900. 



By J. Alston Moffat, London. 



Ravages by cut worms were reported to me from far and near as being unusually 

 severe. And several kinds of moths presented themselves to my notice in conspicuous 

 profusion later on, as probably coming from such worms ; such as Agrotis C. nigrum, 



Mamestra devastatrix, Hadena arctica and sev- 

 eral others in lesser numbers, whilst toward the 

 end of the season Agrotis suhgothica (Fig. 5) 

 was in great abundance. 



A moat unusual outbreak of Cramhua exsic- 

 catus made itself manifest in the early part of 

 June, and lasted well into July. Early on 

 Sunday morning, June 10th, I was walking 

 down the delightfully quiet street, when my 

 attention was attracted by the singular appear- 

 ance of the pavement in front of me. I thought 

 it was covered with peanut shells, broken up< 

 very fine, and fancied some boys had been having a feast on the previous evening, but on 

 reaching the spot I found the strange appearance to ba produced by the wings of that 

 moth. I looked up, and there was a restaurant lamp overhead, and the light irom it had 

 dazzled the moths and brought them down, when they got trodden underfoot by the travel 

 of the previous evening, until the stone pavement, for a space of eight feet in diameter, 

 was literally put out of sight with their remains. How many deep I could not say. If 

 this was but one of many such " slaughter pits," which it is reasonable to believe was the 

 case, then how little conception one can form of the multitudes of them that were de- 

 stroyed in one night ; whilst it made no perceptible reduction to the numbers left in the 

 fields or at the lights. Then to think of the injury done to crops — grasses mostly — dur- 

 ing the feeding up of the larvae for the production of such swarms of moths, whilst the 

 cause of such injury would be all unseen and unsuspected by those suffering from their 

 depiedations. 



The notorious " Buffalo Bug," sometimes most misleadingly called " moth," to which, 

 it has no resemblance, it being in reality a beetle, Anthrenus scrophularice, Linn. (Fig. 6 d), 

 has become an established pest in London. Early in the year I took the beetle on the 

 windows of the Y.M.O.A. building; and complaints of its depredations were heard from 

 various parts of the city during the summer. About the first of August two larvje were 

 brought to me by a lady ; one seemed full-fed, the other about half grown. The one 

 pupated about the first of September, and gave forth the beetle in October, the other was 

 still feeding at the end of the month, but died before maturing. The larval stage is the 

 only form of its existence known 

 to the majority of housekeepers, 

 which 13 correctly represented at 

 Fig. 6a, greatly enlarged, the line 

 at the side indicating the natural 

 size, and they would hardly be- 

 lieve that the beetle at d was the 

 same insect, or one from which 

 they had anything to fear. The 

 beetles are black, ornamented 

 with white and red, but are ex- 

 tremely variable ; so much so 

 that three forms have received 

 distinguishing names. It is a European insect, but there it is spoken of as a '• Flower 

 Beetle," although known to enter houses and destroy " furs, clothes, animal collections, and 

 even leather and dried plants." It was on this continent that it first obtained its notoriety 

 as a carpet pest, the habit here of tacking down carpets for a year giving it a splendid 

 opportunity to propagate undisturbed ; with this, as with others of its kind, frequent 



