146 SURFACE CATERPILLARS. 
permitting) through the winter, and return fully to ravaging with the 
return of warmer weather; sometimes, as in 1884 and the following 
year, doing great mischief even in February and March. ‘Towards 
May or June they turn to chrysalids in the earth, and the moths 
appear about a month later. 
The figure (p, 148) gives a very good idea of the Heart and Dart 
Moth in its different stages. The moths of both kinds have the upper 
wings with variously distributed shades of grey and brown; the hinder 
wings of A. seyetum almost entirely pearly white; and of 4. eaclama- 
tionis, white, with upper margin and nerves brownish in the male, and 
dark brown in the female. 
The reports sent referred in almost every instance, excepting the 
following, to attack of the Surface Caterpillars to Turnips or Mangolds; 
but in this one instance we have such a well-described account of the 
attack of the pests to young Gorse, Ulex (? europaeus), that I give it 
almost at full length. Such a severe attack on this plant not having, 
so far as I am aware, been recorded before, the notes may prove of 
very practical interest. 
On October 380th Mr. Robert T. Collins (forester), writing to me 
from Trentham, Stoke-upon-Trent, forwarded me specimens of Surface 
Caterpillars which I could not see differed from larvee of Ayrotis segetum, 
and which he mentioned were working sad havoc in young Gorse 
coverts in that neighbourhood, with request for information regarding 
them. The caterpillars were then only about half grown. 
Mr. Collins noted as follows :—‘‘I purchased last spring just 
over £100 worth of Gorse seed (French I bought it for), and sowed it 
on both light and heavy land. 
“The larve sent come from light land,—gravel on the highest 
part, and sloping down to the north to a sandy loam. 
‘The seed was sown May 13th in rows with corn drill, every other 
pipe being stopped up, making the rows fourteen inches apart. This 
came up very thick indeed, and at the end of July the larva began to 
eat the young Gorse, in some cases below, and in some above, the 
cotyledons, eating most of it clean off; but some pieces had the side 
only eaten for an inch or more in length, which fell over, hanging by 
a piece of the bark. This went on through August and September. 
Most of the damage is down the slope. 
“The grubs feed at night, and go down into the ground beside 
the roots in the daytime; and they have almost devoured some five 
acres of it. 
“There was an old Gorse on this spot, which I cut down and 
burned, and trenched the ground before sowing. 
‘*T have sown other coverts some ten miles away on either side of 
here, on stiff heavy clay, and these have suffered somewhat similarly, 
