ti THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



Turning to the 'Entomologist' for January, 1892, we find an 

 entirely opposite variety figured. In this specimen the primaries 

 are wholly smoky brown, with the exception of three small 

 white spots on the right side and two on the left ; the secondaries 

 are more heavily marked than usual. Mr. Bright possesses a 

 similar but more melanic specimen, in which the primaries are 

 entirely brown and the secondaries velvety black, with rose-orange 

 tawny along the costal area and pinkish orange on the inner 



»^^^gi"- F. W. Frohawk. 



December, 1895. 



CARPOCAPSA POMONELLA A NUT-FEEDEE. 

 By Robert Adkin, F.E.S. 



It is upwards of a century and a half since attention was 

 called to Carpocapsa pomonella as an enemy to the apple crop, 

 and during recent years, apple-growing having become an im- 

 portant industry, more particularly in America and the Austra- 

 lian colonies, an enormous amount of evidence has been recorded 

 regarding it. That the larva should be found to infect pears, and 

 even the berries of the white beam-tree {Pyrus aria) (Proc. South 

 Lond. Ent. Soc, 1888, p. 64), does not seem to have surprised 

 any one; but the statement that it also attacked certain kinds of 

 nuts appears to have been received by many with considerable 

 doubt. 



Wishing to satisfy myself on the point, I have for some years 

 past kept a look-out for any nut-feeding lepidopterous larvae, and 

 hardly an autumn has passed without a few being found in 

 walnuts ; but although every possible care was taken with them, 

 it was not until the present year that I was successful in rearing 

 an imago, the disturbance of the larva in opening the nut pro- 

 bably being the cause of failure. 



In the autum)! of 1894 some walnuts that were sent to table 

 were found to be infected to the extent of about six or seven per 

 cent, of their number, but, unfortunately, the majority of them had 

 been badly crushed before my attention was called to the presence 

 of the larvae. I, however, secured those that were least injured, 

 and having satisfied myself that the larvse were all of one species, 

 I put the nuts together again as neatly as I could, placed them in 

 a glass jar with some sand to await results, and was rewarded by 

 rearing a fine example of (7. pomonella in July last. A subsequent 

 examination of the nuts showed that the moth was reared from 

 one the shell of which had been but little broken, and the kernel 

 disturbed only so far as was necessary for the examination of the 

 larva; in all the others, which were more or less badly crushed, 

 the remains of dead larvae only were found. The skin of the 

 pupa, from which the moth had emerged, was found projecting 



