102 GOOSEBERRY. 



with smaller dots at the side, that the tail is sometimes de- 

 scribed as black. They are furnished with a pair of black 

 claw-feet on each of the three segments next the head ; the 

 next segment is legless ; and on the succeeding six segments 

 is a pair of pale-coloured sucker-feet, and there is another 

 pair beneath the tail, making twenty pairs in all. The 

 caterpillar is sprinkled with dots or jmtches of black, until its 

 last moult, when these are thrown off with the skin, and the 

 caterpillar becomes of a pale-green, but still orange behind 

 the head and on the tail ; the head also is paler. This change 

 of colour with the last moult is particularly to be noticed, as 

 otherwise it may be supposed that two species of caterpillars 

 are present on the leafage. The number of feet should also 

 be particularly noticed. 



After their last moult the caterpillars go down into the 

 ground, where they form a yellow-brown cocoon of a gummy 

 secretion, in which they turn to a green or yellowish green 

 pupa, orange on the thorax and ajjex of the abdomen. From 

 this the sawfly comes out in about three weeks during summer; 

 in the case of the late broods the grub remains uuchanged in 

 the cocoon during winter, and does not turn to the chrysalis 

 till spring, in time for the Gooseberry Sawfly to make its 

 appearance as the Gooseberry and Currant bushes are coming 

 into leaf. 



The general colour of the sawflies is yellowish ; the mouth 

 pale testaceous ; the thorax with some large black marks in 

 the female, in the male all black excepting one yellowish 

 mark ; abdomen yellow or orange, but in the male the back 

 of abdomen black excepting at tip. Legs pale testaceous, 

 parts above the femur or thigh white ; black tips to the 

 posterior shanks and feet (these sometimes wholly black) ; 

 anterior feet also tipped with brownish or black. The four 

 wings transparent and iridescent ; stigma (mark on the fore 

 edge of the fore wings) black. The length is from a quarter 

 to a third of an inch, and the expanse of the wings is about 

 half an inch in the male ; rather more in the female. 



The life-history is that the female sawfly appears about 

 May (or earlier), and lays her eggs beneath the Gooseberry 

 or Currant leaves, inserting them in the skin of the leaf very 

 slightly by the side of the largest veins. The grubs soon 

 hatch, and begin feeding on the leaf on which they are placed, 

 which they soon pierce full of holes, and continue to feed on 

 until it is partially or wholly devoured, excepting the mid-ribs. 

 Thus they continue their work of destruction, moulting from 

 time to time until they are three-quarters of an inch long, 

 and may be seen scattered round the edge of a partially 

 devoured leaf, holding on by their fore-legs with their tails in 



