FIRST APPEARANCES OP BIRDS, INSECTS, ETC. 269 



agrestis] that appeared in the Corfe Castle district and destroyed 

 much garden produce, so 1904 will long be remembered for 

 a no less remarkable plague of the common large snail 

 (Helix aspersa) in the same neighbourhood. All kinds of 

 snails seemed more plentiful than usual, but this species 

 was in far greater abundance than I have ever previously 

 seen it, though fortunately the damage caused by it was 

 trifling. One met with it everywhere, and until they were 

 collected and destroyed large numbers lived in the ivy grow- 

 ing against the front of my house, and at first caused some 

 excitement by the peculiarly weird musical sounds that were 

 heard in the house at night, whenever the window panes 

 happened to be wet on the outside, and some enterprising 

 snails were enjoying a promenade thereon. The noise made 

 by a " musical snail," though intermittent, somewhat resembles 

 that made when the finger is very slowly moved round the 

 moistened edge of a glass bowl (E. R. B.). 



PLAGUE OF GOOSEBERRY SAWFLY. Throughout the summer 

 the gooseberry and currant bushes in the gardens round Corfe 

 Castle were attacked by hosts of larvae of the Gooseberry 

 Sawfly (Nematus grossularice], which, except where collected and 

 destroyed, quickly devoured the whole crop of leaves on every 

 bush, and thus caused the swelling fruit to shrivel up, instead of 

 ripening. Fresh families of larvae, doubtless representing a 

 succession of broods, were continually hatching out over a 

 period of many weeks, during which eggs and larvae of all 

 sizes were being frequently collected by hand by the thousand 

 off my own gooseberry and currant bushes, for the former of 

 which the Sawfly showed rather a preference. If a sharp watch 

 is kept, especially on the lower parts of the bushes, for leaves 

 that are assuming a skeletonized appearance, a large number of 

 larvae and eggs can be destroyed with a single leaf, the semi- 

 transparent whitish eggs being laid end to end in rows along 

 the principal ribs on the underside of the leaf, which the newly- 

 hatched larvae proceed to reduce to a skeleton before moving 

 elsewhere and gradually distributing themselves over the bush. 



