1900] PRAs. 108 



same time adding very usefully to the knowledge of the boys. I have 

 personally and for many years been fully acquainted and co-operated 

 with the working of the whole system of which the above is but one 

 small detail, and can say that it answers excellently. 



PEAS. 



Cabbage Moth. Mamestra hrassica, Linn. 



The Cabbage Moth is one of our very common insects, and its 

 caterpillars well known for the damage which they cause (and some- 

 times to a very serious extent) to various kinds of Cabbage — as summer 

 Cabbage, Cauliflower, and the like. Besides their especial fondness 

 for the Brassicaceous crops (from which this species is named), they 

 feed, according to convenience, if nothing more to their taste occurs, 

 on almost any other ordinary plant leafage ; but it was not until the 

 past season that I had a trustworthy notice of the caterpillars doing 

 such definite injury to the shoots and leafage of Pea plants in a garden 

 under observation, and for two successive summers, that it seems worth 

 record, and this more especially as, from the difference in colour of the 

 grubs in very early life, from their subsequent well-known appearance, 

 they are not always easily recognizable. 



In their quite early stages they are green, but afterwards the body 

 is usually divided longitudinally into two equal regions as regards 

 colour ; the upper half as a general thing being of olive-brown ground 

 colour, the lower ochreous. The tints, however, vary exceedingly. 

 Sometimes the upper part is brown instead of olive, sometimes black 

 with flesh-coloured markings, and sometimes the entire body has a 

 ground colour of a dingy green. The length of the caterpillar is about 

 an inch and a quarter. The head is ochreous, or marbled with darker 

 brown, and on the back of each segment is a somewhat triangular- 

 shaped mark, lighter at the edge and pointing backwards. The 

 caterpillars are cylindrical, smooth, but somewhat velvety, and roll 

 into a ring if annoyed. When full-grown they leave their food-plant, 

 and change to chestnut-coloured chrysalids in the eartli, or on the 

 surface of the ground, from which the moths come out in May, or later 

 in the following summer. 



These moths are about an inch and two-thirds or rather more in 

 expanse of the fore wings, which are of a rich brown or dark smoky 

 grey-brown mottled and marbled with confused markings, some paler 

 and some black, with a ear-shaped spot bordered with white. The 

 hinder wings are brown, paler towards the base, and the head, body 

 between the wings and abdomen of the same colour as the wings. 



