416 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



autumn, at which] season they spun their boat-shaped 

 cocoons among their food leaves and emerged the 

 following spring. 



The caterpillars of the Rose Moth (Argyrotosa Berg- 

 manniana) we have met with too frequently in the 

 Rosary, where, as a " worm i' the bud," or among the 

 tender leaves webbed together, it almost every summer 

 commits great havoc. Carpocapsa pomonella (the Cod- 

 ling Moth) scarcely needs any introduction, it is a 

 pretty little insect, but too partial to the apples in our 

 orchards to be a general favourite. Every one is 

 familiar with the "webby" fruit that falls prematurely 

 in early autumn, the grub that is found in its interior- 

 is the objectionable larva of this insidious pest, which 

 lays its egg in the " eye " of the apple in its very 

 young state, and in some seasons these unscrupulous 

 grubs are so numerous, that they commend themselves 

 to our notice as the perpetrators of an immense amount 

 of mischief. More plentiful sometimes than the last, 

 is the little Green Oak Moth (Tortrix viridana\ we 

 have often seen both caterpillar and moth literally 

 swarming on the oak, the foliage of which in the Park 

 and the meadows in the valley they had - very exten- 

 sively disfigured, if not nearly destroyed. The Ermine 

 Moth ( Ypomoneuta padella) is the parent of those 

 speckled larvae which we often find feeding gre- 

 gariously, or grouped together in their cocoons, under 

 the shelter of a silken awning set up by themselves on 

 the whitethorn, the blackthorn and other growths. 

 We have more than once seen such an extent of 

 quickset hedge hung with the white fabric of these 

 tiny grubs, which secrete their own materials, that, 

 familiar as we are with many of the wonders of natural 

 history, we have been lost in astonishment at the ap- 

 parent disproportion between these diminutive artists 

 and the result of their labours. Adela is our next 

 genus, and Adela De Geerella, as well as Adela viridella, 

 we have often netted. The antennae in the first of the 



