THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 267 
application of a remedy to so many trees was a matter of so 
much labour, nothing was attempted to remedy the evil.” 
Then follows a list of the pear-trees injured ; and from this 
it appears that some varieties suffered much more severely 
than others. In the course of a fortnight after these observa- 
tions were made, new leaves began to push out vigorously on 
the defoliated trees, and within a month or six weeks all was 
green again. 
“In the meantime,” says Mr. Bethune, “the mischief- 
makers were preparing for a second descent, and we in our 
turn were preparing to receive them. On the 29th of July, 
when going through the orchard in the afternoon, the new 
brood of flies were found in the greatest abundance, resting 
on the young leaves and on those portions of green which 
still remained on the leaves partially eaten by the last brood. 
They were congregated, however, most thickly on those trees 
where green leaves were most abundant. On disturbing them 
they would fall to the ground, with the antenne bent under 
the body, and the head bent downwards..... . We caught 
sixty specimens, and might have taken hundreds: they were 
so thickly spread that in many instances there were two or 
three on a single leaf. By the last week in August the second 
brood of slugs were hatched. Now those trees which had 
previously escaped were all more or less infested..... my: 8 
raised platform was rigged up in a one-horse cart, in which 
was placed a barrel of water in which a pound of powdered 
hellebore had been mixed; and from this elevated stand this 
mixture was showered lightly on the trees from the rose of a 
watering-pot. It was astonishing how quickly the trees were 
cleared by this method: scarcely a slug could be found on a 
tree the morning after the application had been made; and 
ten pounds of hellebore, with five or six days’ work of a man 
and horse, served to go over the whole ground.” 
Powdered hellebore has been successfully tried in England 
on asmall scale; but there is an apparent difficulty in raising 
the water to a sufficient height to be of much service among 
the giant pear-trees of Worcestershire and Herefordshire. 
Still | would by no means discourage the attempt. 
In a scientific point of view it would be interesting to 
ascertain the identity or otherwise of the “slugs” of Europe 
and America, and to ascertain also whether the slugs had 
