186 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



My experience differs from this, inasmuch as T feel con- 

 fident that the decay on the surface, the white orifice, and the 

 mould so often observable around the orifice, are so many 

 indications of the escape of the larva when full-fed, and that 

 they have no connexion with its introduction, except inas- 

 much as the introduction, at some unascertained period, 

 must have been antecedent to the exit. Nothing more than 

 patience (and rather a large share of that virtue I admit) is 

 required to observe how these little white apertures are 

 made ; the full-fed larva may, by perseverance, be detected 

 in the very act, which is a sufficiently rapid one, occupying 

 less than a minute ; the head comes first as a matter of 

 course, and ])erfoniis a series of convolutions, at each of 

 which a greater portion of the body is extruded, until it 

 finally falls, finding any resting-place which chance may 

 provide. 



It is a matter of importance, as well as interest, to know 

 that this insect, supposed for a period of at least half a cen- 

 tury to feed exclusively on the orange, should in our day 

 have migrated to the pear; and even now I seem scarcely 

 able to assert that this is really a migration, one thing only 

 being certain, namely, that it exerts its destructive powers on 

 both these fruits. 



My friend Mr. Sterry, of Peckham Rye, applied to me in 

 October last under the following circumstances : having 

 harvested his pears with his usual care (he being a most 

 painstaking and therefore successful cultivator), found, among 

 his crop of Marie Louise nouvelle, one after another getting 

 prematurely soft and refusing to keep ; and that each pear, 

 as he broke it open, had not only become " sleepy " through- 

 out, but contained a number of white maggots. A pro- 

 fessional gardener would probably have been contented to 

 conclude, " Ah ! it's only the thrip," and would have 

 syringed the heap of pears with a solution of Gishurst's 

 compound, or dusted it with some flea- or beetle-destroyer. 

 Not so my friend. His is one of those minds that desire to 

 know the character of an enemy before attacking him. What 

 wealth of grain and fruit might be annually saved were our 

 cultivators generally of this mind ! But it is not so : like 

 the gamekeeper, the professional cultivator devotes friend and 

 foe to indiscriminate slaughter. 



