216 INSECT TRANSFORMATIONS. 



depositing six eggs within a quarter of an hour. 

 Each time she placed herself as if she wished to cut 

 into the leaf with her saw ; but, upon taking out 

 the leaf, the eggs appeared rather projecting than 

 lodged in its substance. They adhered so firmly, 

 however, that they could not be detached without 

 crushing them. He could not discover any groove;* 

 but we think it likely that a minute cut is made in 

 the exterior membrane of the leaf, the edges of which 

 grasp and hold firm the part of the egg which is 

 thrust into it by the insect. Be this as it may, the 

 caterpillars are hatched in two or three weeks; and 

 they feed in company till after midsummer, frequently 

 stripping both the leaves and fruit of an extensive 

 plantation. The caterpillar has six legs and sixteen 

 prolegs, and is of a green colour mixed with yellow, 

 and covered with minute black dots raised like sha- 

 green. In its last skin it loses the black dots and 

 becomes smooth and yellowish white. The Caledo- 

 nian Horticultural Society have published a number 

 of plans for destroying these caterpillars. 



An allied species of saw-fly (Ntmatus Caprece, 

 STEPHENS) frequently becomes extensively destruc- 

 tive to several species of willow, 'sallow, and osier. 

 It is so like that of the gooseberry and that of the 

 willow (Nematus salicis), which is not British, that it 

 has been confounded with these by Fabricius, Stew- 

 art, Gmelin, and other authors. In the summer of 

 1828, we observed a considerable group of young 

 standards of the golden osier (Salix vitellina}, in a 

 nursery at Lewisham, rendered quite leafless by these 

 caterpillars; which, when feeding, throw themselves 

 into singular postures by holding only with their 

 fore feet. The fly -appears in spring, and places its 

 eggs in a round patch on the back of the leaf, and 

 not along the nervures, like the gooseberry saw fly. 



* Reaumur, v, 1 25. 



