ANTLER MOTH. 19 
In that year the first reports, which were sent on the 22nd of June 
and afew days later, noted the caterpillars as making considerable 
havoc to the grasses on the hill-pastures in the western part of Rox- 
burghshire, also in the adjoining counties of Dumfries and Selkirk ; 
likewise the appearance (in immense numbers) of grubs, doing ex- 
treme damage in the highlands of the South of Scotland, was reported. 
The complete observations of the summer of 1894 (see ‘ Highteenth 
Report on Injurious Insects,’ with names of contributors appended to 
their communications) noted this caterpillar outbreak as ‘‘ having been 
more or less general over the hill country of Kirkcudbrightshire, and 
over the adjacent sheep-farms in Ayrshire, the Dumfriesshire hills, 
and the contiguous districts in Lanarkshire, Peebles, Selkirk, and 
Roxburgh. Seven counties were affected to my knowledge, and there 
may be more.”’-—(R. 38.) 
The most westerly locality from which I had a report was Hawick, 
in Roxburgh, and this, measuring across to the south-eastern border 
of Ayrshire, would give a measurement of the length of the more or 
less infested area of about a hundred miles; the greatest breadth 
might be estimated at about thirty miles. 
In the past season (that is, 1895) the first observation of the 
appearance of the Antler Moth caterpillars was sent me on the 24th of 
May, by Mr. W. Gray, from Tanlawhill, Langholm, Dumfriesshire. 
This was nearly a month earlier than the first report of 1894, which 
was forwarded on the 22nd of June; and the grubs sent by Mr. Gray 
were still of various sizes, from very small to perhaps about a third or 
half-grown. Mr. Gray observed :—‘‘I send you some of the Antler 
grubs, which were so bad last year. They have made their appearance 
again here this year, and I fear will be quite as bad as last season... . 
I hear that they are very bad in Roxburghshire.” 
No more information was sent me until, on the 12th of September, 
Mr. Robert Service, of Maxwelltown, Dumfries, who had observed the 
infestation in the previous year over a large extent of country, wrote 
me as follows, in reply to my enquiries :— 
*T have not been quite so much amongst the hills this season as 
usual, but with the exception of a patch of country just on the extreme 
corner of Lanarkshire that runs into Dumfriesshire, just behind 
Queensberry, I neither saw nor heard of the ravages of the <hill- 
grubs’ to the eastward of Nithsdale. At that place, at the farm of 
Nunnerie, there was a good deal of damage done to the grass in May 
and early June. 
“On the westward of Nithsdale there was again a pretty wide- 
spread attack in the parish of Carsphairn.* ‘These were all that I 
* Carsphairn, a district in the northern part of the shire of Kirkcudbright, 
where the Antler Moth caterpillars did much damage in 1894. 
c2 
