194 Insects most injurious to Cultivators : — ■ 



following segments are furnished with three pairs of short arti- 

 culated legs ; the fourth segment is footless; but the 5th, 6th, 

 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th segments are provided with short 

 fleshy prolegs (making twenty feet, together with the articulated 

 legs), similar in construction but more numerous than those of 

 the lepidopterous insects (butterflies and moths). Indeed, this 

 caterpillar has so much the appearance of a lepidopterous cater- 

 pillar, that, unless its transformations had been traced, it might 

 have been supposed that the injury was produced by the progeny 

 of a moth. It has, however, the habit, when alarmed, of rolling 

 itself in a spiral manner {Jig. 73. a), joining its head to its tail, like 

 one of the cylindrical centipedes (/ulidse). The larva, when full 

 grown, is rather more than half an inch in length, and is about 

 as thick as a small crow-quill. 



Of the devastating powers of the larva, the following extract 

 from Mr. Yarrell's memoir upon this insect, published in the 

 Transactions of the Zoological Society, will give a sufficient idea : — 

 " The crops of turnips in the counties of Kent, Essex, Sussex, 

 and part of Buckinghamshire, Hampshire, and Wiltshire, were 

 considered a failure ; and so long did the various broods continue 

 their attacks, that the produce of a second, and even of a third, 

 sowing did not escape destruction ; nor was it till the occurrence 

 of the rains in September, after an unusually dry summer, in 

 many districts, that the m.ischief ceased. Some farmers, who 

 sowed for turnips again immediately after the first rain, were as 

 successful as the lateness of the period would admit. It has 

 been observed of those turnips that suffered in the leaf from the 

 attacks of the black caterpillar, but not sufficiently to produce 

 the death of the plant, that the turnip itself had become pithy, 

 and of little comparative value. So great was the failure of the 

 turnip crop generally, that in some of the counties on the coast, 

 where water carriage was available, ship-loads of turnips were 

 said to have been contracted for from the Continent to supply 

 the deficiency." The whole crop of turnips near Dover is said 

 by Mr. Saunders [Trans. ILntomoL Soc, vol. i. p. 76.) to have 

 been destroyed, " twenty or thirty caterpillars being found on a 

 single plant, and scarcely a vestige of green remaining ; the 

 caterpillars then seeking subsistence on the harder parts of the 

 leaves, such as the tendrils and nerves, which they at first re- 

 fused." A crop of turnips, near Godalming, is described by 

 Rusticus {Entomol. Mag., No. 14. p. 339.) as having, " in 

 two short days, been swept from the face of the earth. The land 

 was every where as bare as on the day it had been sowed. There 

 was no speck of green for the eye to rest upon. It was a wild 

 and universal desolation ; and the black crawling vermin that 

 had caused the ruin were clustered in bunches on the ground, 

 and on the remnants of the turnips." The turnips which escape 



