40 cohn and grass. 



taking date, size of larva, and habit, I would be inclined to say 

 M. strigilis.'" 



One great difficulty is, — how came the caterpillars to be in young 

 Wheat in February ? Supposing the eggs to be laid in the preceding 

 year in due course before the autumn Wheat was even sown, there 

 was no likelihood of egg-deposit on the Wheat. But turning to Mr. 

 Eenyard's observation of the attack not being at all found on ground 

 sowed after fallow, only "on the lay ground," and this difference being 

 in the same field, the idea occurs whether the Miana eggs might not 

 have been deposited on some food grass, and the caterpillars afterwards 

 transferred themselves when food was needed in the spring to the 

 young Wheat. I find on reference to the observations given in Mr. 

 W. Buckler's work on ' Larvae of British Butterflies and Moths,' vol. 

 V. p. 104, previously referred to, that the larva of ill. expoUta has been 

 recorded as being about five-sixteenths of an inch long about the end of 

 October, and (after hybernation), about the end of April, as being 

 nearly half an inch long ; and it was noticed by Mr. Gardner that in 

 the case of the Carex, one of its food-plants, " the habit of the larva is 

 to eat out the very heart of the plant, working its way down to the 

 white portion close to the root"; also that "when one plant has 

 yielded its nourishment, the larva migrates to another." 



So far as I could judge from the young Wheat plants sent me, the 

 caterpillar left the centre when the food supply had been exhausted, 

 and it might thus have transferred itself previously. But the destruc- 

 tion was so complete that the Wheat crop failed, and the ground was 

 occupied by another crop, so that I was unable to procure chrysalids 

 or moths. 



It seems, however, worth while to give as much information as 

 could be made out of this attack which proved locally so very injurious, 

 and I have given the above notes in the hope that if the attack should 

 recur, or lepidopterists conversant with the appearance of the moths of 

 the genus Miana should be working in the coming year in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Lymington, we might gain observations which, with those 

 above noted, would make a complete record. And meanwhile I have 

 merely given the specific name expolita at heading, bracketed and 

 with note of interrogation, just to show that this was the species which 

 the apecimens sent me appeared to resemble. 



Observation. — During the past season nearly all of the insect pests 

 commonly infesting corn crops were more or less reported, as well as 

 some of those more especially infesting grass-land. These I attended 

 to at the time by careful reply to the enquiries regarding nature and 

 treatment ; but as all these various infestations have been fully gone 



