30 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 



pass into their next state, which they do underground, 

 instead of destroying them by this manoeuvre, their ap- 

 pearing again the following year in greater numbers is 

 actually facilitated. Yet this plan applied to our com- 

 mon cabbage caterpillar, which does not go underground, 

 would succeed. So that some knowledge of the manners 

 of an insect is often requisite to enable us to check its ra- 

 vages effectually. With respect to noxious caterpillars 

 in general, agriculturists and gardeners are not usually 

 aware that the best mode of preventing their attacks is to 

 destroy the female fly before she has laid her eggs, to do 

 which the moth proceeding from each must be first as- 

 certained. But if their research were carried still further, 

 so as to enable them to distinguish the pupa and discover 

 its haunts, and it would not be at all difficult to detect 

 that of the greatest pest of our gardens, the cabbage but- 

 terfly, the work might be still more effectually accom- 

 plished. Some larvfe are polyphagous, or feed upon a 

 variety of plants ; amongst others that of the yellow- 

 tail moth (Arctia chrysorhcea) ; yet gardeners think they 

 have done enough if they destroy the web-like nests 

 which so often deform our fruit-trees, without suspecting 

 that new armies of assailants will wander from those on 

 other plants which they have suffered to remain. Thus 

 will thousands be produced in the following season, 

 which, had they known how to distinguish them, might 

 have been extirpated. Another instance occurred to me 

 last year, when walking with a gentleman in his estate at 

 a village in Yorkshire. Our attention was attracted by 

 several circular patches of dead grass, each having a stick 

 with rags suspended to it, placed in the centre. I at once 

 discerned that the larva of the cock-chafer had eaten the 



