NEMATUS RIBESII. 265 



three or four days afterwards every blade of grass 

 would be dried up, and nothing meet the eye but the 

 red earth, as if the proprietor had laid out his ground 

 for a summer fallow. I asked him how it was possible 

 to get rid of this grub, and found his remedy was to 

 roll the field with a heavy roller, dra^Ti by a horse, 

 and thus to crush the larvae." 



While these sheets were passing through the press 

 I have had the pleasure of perusing a paper Avritten 

 by my relative, B. J. Clarke, Esq., on the natural 

 history of one of our garden pests, the Gooseberry 

 saw-fly. I can now only avail myself of the part in 

 which its ravages are mentioned. Mr. Clarke says, 

 " On arri\ing at La Bergerie (Portarlington, Queen's 

 County) the latter end of June, 1837, 1 was informed 

 by the gardener, that what he termed the green- 

 worm blight was rapidly stripping the gooseberry 

 and currant plantations of their leaves, and that, 

 when he shook the trees, a profusion of the green- 

 worm, to use his own expression, fell from them. 

 On inspection, I found the injury arose from count- 

 less numbers of the lar\^8e of the gooseberry saw-fly 

 {Nematus ribesii), which adhered to the leaves, de- 

 vouring all the pulpy part, and lea^^ng nothing but 

 the thick fibres standing out, giA'ing the denuded 

 trees a most spectral appearance. I frequently reck- 

 oned twenty or thirty of these pseudo-caterpillars. 



