MOTTLED UMBER MOTH. 181 



little below, the surface. From these, in common rule 

 (though some may remain unchanged till spring), the moths 

 come up in autumn. The development begins in October, 

 and may last till December, and even occur later irregularly 

 till spring, which causes great difficulty in certainty of pre- 

 vention by sticky-banding. 



The female moths creep up the trees and lay their eggs on 

 buds or twigs, or in crevices of the bark, or in the little fur- 

 row between the extremity of the cut-back twigs and the l)ark 

 healing over the edge. From these eggs the little caterpillars 

 come out towards the end of March, or, speaking more gener- 

 ally, when their food is ready for them, and as they grow (in 

 years of bad attack), devour indiscriminately all they can 

 reach, whether buds, or flowers, or leaves, or growing fruit, 

 until, as noticed in cases of bad attack, the ravaged tree, with 

 the remains of the destroyed spun-up leafage, looks as if it 

 had been scorched by fire ; and, if the leafage that is ]U'eferred 

 falls short, they make up as well as they can from what may 

 be at hand in the neighbourhood, and feed till the time comes 

 for them to go down for their chrysalis change, from May 

 onwards, as mentioned above. 



The injury from Mottled Umber caterpillars, as well as 

 from others of the same nature, is to be found to a greater or 

 less extent yearly on foliage of orchard (and also of forest) 

 trees, but is especially prevalent when hot and dry weather 

 occurs for a prolonged period in late spring and early summer, 

 the weather being thus favourable to the development of the 

 caterpillars, but not to a sufficiently rapid growth of leafage 

 to counterbalance their ravages. 



The year 1896 was a very noticeable example of this. The 

 widespread devastations caused by leafage caterpillars, amongst 

 which those of the Mottled Umber, as well as Winter Moths, 

 played their parts, will be well remembered. In my 'Annual 

 Eeport' for that year, at pp. 94-9G, will be found extracts 

 from 'British Piainfall of 1895,' by G.J. Symons, F.E.S. ; 

 and from ' The Meteorology of England ' (in the second 

 quarter of 189G), by James Glaisher, F.Ii.S., giving records 

 of temperature and drought, which are well worth studying 

 in connection with coincident great appearance of leafage 

 infestation in those years. 



Just noticing one or two points, it will be seen that there 

 was much drought in May, and also in the last half of 

 Septe^nhcr in 1895, and relatively to this one of my observers, 

 writing from Maidstone, Kent, mentioned that Cheimatohia 

 hramata, the Winter Moth, appeared again in enormous num- 

 hers in the autumn, as also did Ilijhernia defoliaria, another 

 species of winter appearing moth. This of course greatly 



