264 THE ENTOMOLOGIST, 



SUGAR versus NATURAL FOOD. 

 By F. C. Woodforde. 



This season has been in this neighbourhood an unusually 

 good one for sugar ; and also, I think, a very instructive one 

 with respect to the amount of attraction sugar has for moths. 

 Ever since the end of the great frost of February and the early 

 part of March, moths have been unusually abundant. In the 

 third week of March Hyhernia leucophcearia and Phigalia pedaria 

 were most abundant ; and I succeeded in taking between twenty 

 and thirty Nyssia hispidaria, seven being females, on the trunks 

 of trees. The sallows were fairly productive, but the weather 

 during the season of their bloom was frequently unsuitable. At 

 the end of April, while hunting for pupse of Sesia cidiciformis in 

 birch stumps, I came across two pupse of S. sphegiformis, but 

 both died before the time of emerging. The larvae of Ap)lecta 

 tincta were very abundant during April on the birches, and 

 one evening I collected over seventy in less than an hour and 

 a half. 



_ During May Geometers were abundant ; and on May 28th I 

 tried sugar for the first time, taking Dipterygia scahriuscida (1), 

 Thijatira hatis (1), Iladena tludmnna, and Acronycta rumicis. An 

 account of our success at sugar on June 1st, 3rd, and 4th, written 

 by my friend Mr. E. W. H. Blagg, appeared in the July number 

 of the * Entomologist.' During Whit-week the weather was very 

 warm, with occasionally heavy showers of rain, and sugared 

 trees were literally covered with moths ; but on Monday, June 

 10th, a cold spell set in, with almost frosty nights, and, as a 

 matter of course, nothing appeared on the sugar at all. The 

 change was most striking, after the swarms of the previous 

 week. The week commencing June 16th was warm and fine, 

 and I started on Monday night in full hope of filling my boxes, 

 but to my surprise hardly a moth came to sugar. They were 

 flying about in swarms, but the sugar seemed to have lost all its 

 attraction. Some clumps of seedling aspens, from three to four 

 feet high, seemed a favourite haunt ; and on examining them the 

 next day I found the upper surface of the leaves covered with 

 honey-dew. There was no aphis this year, and these seedlings 

 were in the open, not exposed to droppings from higher trees. 

 Aphis of course is one great source of honey-dew, but could not 

 be the source in this case. I cannot help thinking that the cold 

 nights of the previous week had injured the delicate cuticle of the 

 young leaves, and that the sap had exuded through the injured 

 surface, thus forming what is called honey-dew, and providing 

 natural food for the insects. The oaks seemed not much affected, 

 and their leaves were almost entirely free from exudation, though 



