426 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



knowing gardener has encircled the trunk. By the 

 side of the moth is a ponderous little grub, with 

 abdomen of distended satiny segments, and silky 

 colourless thorax, from which sprout little stumps to 

 show that a little more and it had been a winged 

 insect. It is the female of the winter moth, more 

 palpably than he caught on her way up the tree. 

 After she had crawled there and stuck, he flew there 

 to make her acquaintance, to become instead her 

 companion in death. For here, says the fruit-grower, 

 is no road for these baneful grubs going up after 

 next year's apples. 



Who shall say what number of fine, red, juicy 

 apples have been saved by the capture of a single 

 winter moth ? There are no doubt three hundred 

 eggs in our caught female, who, apparently, having 

 given up all hope of reaching the branches, is now 

 laying them on the " grease," fortunately fatal to the 

 embryo as well as to the mother. Between October 

 and January, if we keep the band fresh by occasional 

 renewals, we may expect to catch fifty females on 

 a single tree, and save the fruit buds of March and 

 the blossoms of April from a wilderness of destruction. 

 Sometimes the bands catch in those months hordes 

 of little wiry caterpillars, showing that some prudent 

 mothers have reversed the habit of their species by 

 laying their eggs on the trunk below the bands, a 

 sure method of escape where the banding has been 

 done for the catching of the mature insect alone, 

 and has been discontinued after Christmas. Some- 

 times in May a band will catch the caterpillars that 

 have been blown from their feeding-ground by the 

 wind, and are taking the only way back. 



