GOOSEBERRY AND IVY RED SPIDER. 35 



some special developments of insect and other pest life. To-day my 

 boy and I found an amazing phenomenon on the leaves of the wall 

 Ivy, on all the roads and gardens around here. Thousands, millions, 

 of Spinning Mites ! One leaf, not very big, had over one hundred 

 specimens, and every leaf for almost acres had some." ..." I think 

 I never saw such an army of living things." 



Later on. Prof. Harker kindly sent me the following additional 

 note relatively to observation of web spun on the infested leafage, 

 which, whilst the attack was only just beginning, I had scarcely been 

 able to find, even doubtfully, and usually not at all, on the sample 

 leaves forwarded to me. 



Prof. Harker wrote me : — "After some weeks the enormous numbers 

 of Mites gradually diminished ; but they left behind them what had 

 not at first been visible, their common webs, covering the whole of the 

 Ivy for quite one or two hundred yards, from the ground to the top of 

 the six feet wall, and as these webs caught the dust and wind-borne 

 debris of the roadsides they became thick and matted, and quite dis- 

 figured the whole Ivy. Up to middle of August a few of the Mites 

 were still occasionally found." — (A. H.) 



About the same date as the first of Prof. Barker's observations, 

 given above, that is, on the 17th and on the 29th of April, Sir J. 

 Stewart Kichardson wrote to me from Pitfour Castle, Perth, N.B., 

 regarding the appearance of this infestation on Gooseberry bushes, and 

 afterwards also in great numbers on Ivy. On the 17th of April, Sir J. 

 Stewart Richardson wrote : — " I send you some specimens of what in 

 this district is an entirely new Gooseberry pest." . . . "Last year 

 they were very severe on the bushes in a garden about three miles 

 from here, but this year they are destroying my bushes, particularly 

 the Warrington kind, but are not nearly so bad on the Sulphur 

 Gooseberry." The "Red Spider" was very numerous on the leafage 

 sent. On the 29th of April, Sir J. Stewart Richardson wrote further : 

 — " Since writing to you, I find that the same Spider is very bad on 

 the Ivy, both near the garden and on the house (more than a quarter 

 of a mile distant), so that it cannot be called peculiarily a Gooseberry 

 pest." 



On the 1st of May, Miss F. Pye, writing from Knight's Place, 

 Rochester, observed: — "We are sending you some specimens of Red 

 Spider. My father says it has been a nuisance on a piece of Goose- 

 berries for the last two years " ; and, a few days after, on the 5th of 

 May, Mr. F. Padwick, writing from 101, Buckingham Road, Brighton, 

 requested "information respecting a minute Red Spider which is 

 committing havoc among the Gooseberry trees in the south of 

 Sussex." 



On the 6th of May, Mr. D. D. Gibb, of Ossemsley Manor Farm, 



p2 



