104 PAPERS BY MR. SERVICE [CHAP. xm. 



am waiting with much interest for specimens to see what the 

 cause can be. I rather expect it will be rabbits ! 



Yours very truly, 



ELEANOR A. ORMEROD. 



[The following notes by Mr. Robert Service x are explana- 

 tory of subjoined correspondence. 



"THE ' HILL-GRUB' (the caterpillar of the Antler moth, 

 Charceas graminis). Sheep-farmers are threatened with 

 another plague. The ' hill-grub ' has often done consider- 

 able damage to the upland grass-lands, notably in the years 

 from 1830 to 1835. Just now complaints are rife from 

 farms in many parts of the wide districts ravaged by the 

 Voles 2 (in 1891-92-93). As usual the farmers look on 

 these ' hill-grubs' as very sudden arrivals, but this is not 

 the case, for last autumn the moths which these larvae 

 produce were in extraordinary swarms, and far in advance 

 of their normal numbers. I remember noting at the end of 

 last September when coming down from the neighbour- 

 hood of Loch Dungeon one evening in the twilight, how 

 unusually abundant the Antler moths were flying. The 

 evening was mild and very moist, and just as we got on to the 

 level ground at the outside of a moss of perhaps six acres in 

 extent, we found Antler moths flying in countless myriads 

 in every direction. The time was 6.40, and there was still 

 enough of the gloaming left to see the moths quite distinctly 

 on every side, flying just below the level of the grass-seed 

 heads. 



" On August 23rd I happened to be going across the farm 

 of Townhead, in Closeburn parish, Dumfriesshire, and about 

 10.10 a.m. the Antler moths appeared in myriads. Thousands 

 upon thousands of them were flying in all directions, most 

 of them just amongst and over the flowering heads of the 

 spret, Juncus articulatus ; but many were flying higher in 

 the air, and some mounted up out of sight. It was a won- 

 derful scene, and one that I would not have cared to miss. 

 The effect was altogether different to that presented by the 



1 These observations are extracted from part of a series published 

 under the geographical nom de plume of " Mabie Moss," this (sometime) 

 moss district having been long under the observation of Mr. Service 

 not a young lady, as Miss Ormerod conjectured, but a well-known 

 ornithologist who also takes a considerable interest in Economic 

 Entomology (ED.). 



2 Vide Report of the Departmental Committee appointed by the 

 Board of Agriculture to inquire into a plague of field voles in Scotland 

 (Sir Herbert E. Maxwell, M.P., Chairman). Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1893. 



