ENEMIES OF CONIFEROUS TREES 261 



twelve days, and are easily known by their heavy, 

 awkward flight towards the evening. 



Larch Miner [Tinea (Coleophora) laricella). — 

 Few, other than those specially interested in tree 

 diseases, have the remotest idea that the yellow, 

 withered appearance of many English larch plan- 

 tations is due to the larvae of the above tiny moth. 

 It usually attacks young trees, say, from five to 

 twenty years old, and although it may not kill 

 them outright, yet the repeated onslaughts year 

 after year tend to keep the trees in an unhealthy 

 condition, and so render them liable to other and 

 more deadly diseases. 



Unfortunately, the attacks of the Larch Miner 

 are by no means confined, as is usually supposed, 

 to trees growing under unfavourable conditions, 

 for we have during the past season noticed, in 

 an unusually healthy, fast-growing plantation in 

 Sussex, that almost every tree was more or less 

 affected. Certainly in another large extent of 

 larch in Gloucestershire which was examined a 

 short time ago, and where nine-tenths of the trees 

 were being ruined by Dasyscypha calycina, also 

 known as Peziza, the Larch Miner was very 

 abundant ; but it is probable that young trees, 

 whatever be the state of health, suffer alike, 

 although, where hard -wooded species form a 

 portion of the crop, the larch certainly suffers 

 less than when grown in pure woods. The moth 

 lays its eggs at the end of June on the needles of 

 the larch ; the caterpillar, mining into and feeding 

 upon the interior of the needle, causes it to turn 

 faded and yellow. It lives in the tube thus formed 

 during the winter, changing to a pupa, and ulti- 



