WINTER MOTH. 339 



The moths are most active from sunset, or rather before it, 

 till late in the evening, and the males are stated to appear a 

 few days before the females. If this is so, it would be a con- 

 venient guide as to time being come for sticky banding. 



The female moth creeps up the tree and lays her eggs on 

 buds or twigs, or in crevices of the bark, and from an 

 enormous collection of trimmings from Pear trees (the result 

 of three men's work during three hours, sent a little after the 

 10th of March, by Mr. 0. Lee Campbell, of Glewstone Court, 

 near Eoss), it was made very plain that the moths particularly 

 selected the little furrow between the wood and the bark 

 where shoots had been cut back for egg-deposit ; at the trun- 

 cated end of these cut back twigs, or small boughs, the Winter 

 Moths had laid their eggs in such numbers that the little 

 specks could be seen with the naked eye, arranged so as to 

 form a ring more or less scattered just inside the bark, which 

 had healed since pruning, and so made an outside line of 

 protection to the eggs. This will be found excellently figured 

 in a paper on " The Caterpillar Scourge," in the ' Journal of 

 Horticulture' for June 5th, 1890 (Fleet St., E.C.). 



The eggs when laid are stated to be greenish white, but to 

 become orange and subsequently brown before hatching : my 

 own observations began in the second week in March, when 

 the eggs were changing from their reddish colour to the tint 

 that immediatehj j^recedes hatching. On the 11th of March, 

 Mr. J. Garrood, of Ledbury, had kindly furnished me with a 

 small bundle of Apple twigs, which had been placed in a box 

 in the autumn preceding, with a number of Winter Moths, 

 male and female ; the eggs deposited on the spurs sent me 

 being the eggs of the Winter Moth. On the 26th of March 

 many of the eggs had hatched. 



These eggs were bluntly oval, or cylindrical, rounded at 

 each end, about the 32nd of an inch in length, and the width 

 about two-thirds of the length. The skin was pitted over the 

 surface ; with the help of a moderate magnifier it had the 

 appearance of being shagreened ; under a one-inch power the 

 markings showed as circular depressions so regularly placed as 

 almost to give a honeycomb-like appearance. Some of the eggs 

 were still of the pale reddish tint of which they all appeared to 

 be when sent me ; a few were of green tint, this apparently from 

 the colour of the caterpillar within, now near development, 

 showing through the filmy egg-skin ; and the many empty 

 egg-shells were now (when seen through a magnifier) mere 

 iridescent films, almost glassy in brightness. To the naked 

 eye they gave the appearance of the parts of the twig on 

 which they were placed being beset with little patches of 



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