86 RASPBEERY. 



mischief Tshen they are numerous, as was the case last year in Easp- 

 berry plantations, but this was not all. The female beetles lay their 

 eggs by the still shghtly developed Kaspberry fruit, and the maggots, 

 which presently hatch from these eggs, feed on the fruit until it and 

 they both reach maturity, and the fruit, if not totally destroyed, is at 

 least made unfit for use. The maggots grow to a length of about a 

 quarter or five-eighths of an inch, and are cylindrical, somewhat 

 depressed in front, and lessened at the hinder extremity, which is 

 " terminated above by two brown curved points, and beneath with a 

 cylindrical tubercle employed as a proleg." They have three pairs of 

 moderately long, hairy feet. The colour is yellowish with brownish 

 yellow on the back, the head brown. 



When the Raspberries are ripe, the maggots leave the fruit and 

 seek for some cranny mrder the bark, or in the wood of the Raspberry 

 stem, or some similar sheltering-place, where they form a cocoon or 

 case in which they turn to the pupal state, in which they pass the 

 winter, and from which the beetles come out in the following spring to 

 attack the Raspberry blossoms.* 



This attack is one which, like many other of the fruit insect 

 attacks, is either steadily increasing both in area and amount of 

 damage caused by it, together with the increasing area of fruit crops 

 grown year by year on one spot, or is much more noticed than was 

 formerly the case. In the course of my fifteen years reporting, I have 

 only once before (in 1883) received observations regarding the infes- 

 tation which pointed to it as one of serious moment ; and now it will 

 be seen by the following notes that the attack was present in its beetle 

 form very noticeably in the great Toddington Fruit Grounds, and in 

 various localities in Kent. It was also reported from one locality in 

 Essex, one in Herts, and one in Cambridgeshire, and also from the 

 well-known fruit grounds of Mr. Speir, near Glasgow, and from the 

 east of Perthshire. 



In the past season, the first notice I received of this infestation 

 being present, was sent me on the 26th of May, by Mr. J. Green, fruit 

 grower, of March (Cambridgeshire), who forwarded specimens of the 

 B. touientosm, with the remark that they were sent as " samples of a 

 Raspberry beetle which is doing damage to the Raspberry crop in this 

 neighbourhood this spring. You will notice from the buds, also 

 enclosed, the manner in which the damage is being done." 



* The above description of the larval state of the B. tontcntomK is taken from 

 collation of the accounts given respectively by Prof. Westwood, in his ' Classification 

 of British Insects,' Dr. Ritzema Bos, in his ' Tierische Schadlinge und Niitzlinge,' 

 and Dr. E. L. Taschenberg, in his ' Praktische Insckten-Kunde,' as I have only 

 personal knowledge of the Byturua larvoe in their full-grown state in the ruined 

 Raspberry fruit, 



