56 STRAWBEREY. 



with Mustard) in poisoning the grubs, which point may be worth 

 further experimental enquiry. 



About the Strawberry bed infestation. On the 1st of June, an 

 enquiry was sent me from Newmains, Scone, Perth, N.B., by Mr. J. 

 G. Bryden, accompanied by specimens of Daddy Longlegs grubs, 

 nearly or quite full-grown, and as nice healthy specimens as one could 

 have wished to see if beneficial insects. 



Mr. Bryden noted : — " I enclose specimens of grub, or caterpillar, 

 found among my recently planted Strawbei-ry runners. They are 

 found about the roots of the plants, and seem to commence their work 

 of destruction by severing the leaf- stems from the roots immediately 

 below the ground, thus killing off large numbers of otherwise healthy 

 plants. 



" The land is of very moderate quality, and variable, from stiff 

 loam to fine free soil ; the grub, or caterpillar, is over all alike ; it was 

 manured with ordinary farmyard manure, with four cwt. bone meal 

 additional. 



" What treatment do you think would be successful in eradicating 

 the pest, and save my plants ? I will be planting again next spring, 

 and should much like to know if by any application I could save my 

 Strawberries from such an attack in future." — (J. G. B.) 



It will be noted in the above communication that the Strawberry 

 ground was manured (besides the bone meal) "with ordinary farmyard 

 manure." It is very likely that the grubs might be conveyed in this 

 to the Strawberry beds. This kind of grub is to be found at times in 

 farm manure; and in 188B, one of the years in which damage by these 

 Tipwla larvae was being especially reported, I had a good note from 

 Mr. David Byrd, Tarporley, Cheshire, a very careful observer, men- 

 tioning, with regard to some Turnips, that " the Daddy Longlegs grub 

 was there in numbers, carried into the field with the foldyard manure, 

 and spread in the ridges." 



In the previous year (1882), I received information from Felhamp- 

 ton Court, Church- Stretton, of " great injury being caused to a bed of 

 Strawberries by means of a grub," which turned out to be of one of the 

 smaller kinds of Tiptila, apparently the T. maculosa, or " Spotted 

 Crane Fly," which appears to be just as injurious as the T. oleracea, 

 more especially observed as the Daddy Longlegs. In this instance 

 " the plants had been top-dressed in the autumn with nearly rotten 

 horse manure, and at the time of writing were coming through nicely, 

 but about twenty per cent, failed, going off after they first started. 

 The grub was to be found with its head well into the heart of the 

 young plant, and the leaves all bitten through at the bud." * 



* * Report of Observations of Injurious Insects for 1882,' by E. A. Ormerod, 

 p. 16. 



