96 First Report on Economic Zoology. 



The imagines then escape. It is a very common sight to see hundreds 

 of these empty pupal cases sticking up amongst a few square feet of 

 pasture. They are especially noticeable, projecting from the edges 

 of lawns along gravel paths. These insects do endless mischief to 

 lawns, but never to the same extent that they do to permanent 

 pasture, because the mowing and rolling, especially if carried on late 

 into the autumn, kills so many of the adults, and destroys the eggs, 

 besides compressing the ground so firmly that the Leather-Jackets 

 can move but slowly from root to root. 



Very frequently the damage done to grass land by their larvae is 

 attributed to other causes. Miss Ormerod gives the following 

 instance : — " On ]\Iay 24th Mr. W. Gray, writing from Langholm, 

 Dumfriesshire, N.B., sent me some quite young caterpillars of 

 the Antler Moth of various sizes, from very small up to as much 

 as a third or half-grown. He mentioned at the same time tlie 

 injured appearance of the grass, but that on searching for the cater- 

 pillars there seemed very little sign of them, which he ascribed to 

 their being still so small that they escaped observation. However, 

 about a month later the true cause of the damage was found." The 

 maggots proved to be the larvte of P. maculosa (Eeport XIX., 

 p. 33, 1896). 



The five chief injurious species may have their characteristics 

 summarised as follows : — 



I. The Common Crane-Fly, 

 {Tiinda oleracca). 



This species (Fig. 11, i) is widely distributed over Great Britain, its 

 larvee and those of the next species being the common forms of large 

 Leather Jackets so destructive to all crops. The adults appear from 

 May to September, the majority being seen dm-ing August and 

 September, but they may occur even into October in consideraljle 

 numbers. They can stand a fail' amount of frost, for I have seen 

 them alive after the night temperature has been as low as 28° F. 

 The adult is silvery-grey ; the thorax striped ; the metathorax 

 silvery-white ; the abdomen slaty -grey ; the segments becoming 

 testaceous towards their edges, and there is a dark lateral line 

 between the upper part and the testaceous sides; the apex is also 

 testaceous. The long, slender legs are testaceous ; the tarsi dark 

 brown. The wings are longer than the body, greyish; the costa 

 brown, and sharply contrasted from the rest of the wing, and beneath 

 it there is a greyish, limpid streak in both $ and 9 • 



The larvse when fuU grown reach an inch in length and about the 



