The Grass or Antler Moth. By James Hardy. 199 



clothes of the herds in a few minutes. The coarser grasses of bent and 

 ling, growing in the places covered with fog, seemed to be the chief object 

 of their taste ; and the fine nature grasses are almost in every case 

 neglected. A person who preserved them, in order to discover the fly 

 from whose egg they are derived, found this to be their taste, upon trial, 

 whilst they continued in their worm or eating state. In their anreliae state 

 they are of the size, and vory like in colour, to a small dried raisin. In the 

 worm state they are much like to, though shorter than, the common kale- 

 worm; striped longitudinally with brown stripes,upon a bottom of dun white. 



The sea-gulls soon found them out, as well as the crows ; and the hills 

 made a curious appearance, when covered with flocks of these white and 

 black animals. They did not like the grub merely undercut the grass, but 

 ate all up ; sometimes beginning at the top of the blade and eating down- 

 wards ; at other times eating the plant through further down, and then 

 devouring the whole. 



The spring was long cold in 1759, when they formerly appeared as well 

 as in this; and it is conjectured that this might have prevented the 

 aurelise of last year from becoming flies so early as to lay their eggs in 

 time to produce worms so soon as to be killed by the spring rains ; and 

 that, therefore, all the worms produced had come to maturity. 



The ground they had eaten bare looked, at a distance, like withered 

 coping sod in a drought, on the top of a dike. 



These devastations ceased three or fonr weeks since, incredible numbers 

 having been devoured by the crows and gulls ; heaps of them washed off 

 tho hills by rains, and swept into the rivulets and large waters'; and the 

 remainder have retired into holes under the fog, to undergo their changes 

 into the aurelias state." — F. August 28th, 1802, Farmers' Mag., vol. iii., 

 Edinr. 1804, pp. 487, 488. 



In 1822 there was published i a Edinburgh : "A Treatise on 

 Practical Store-Farming, by the Hon. Wm. John Napier, F.E.S., 

 Edin., Post Captain in the Eoyal Navy," afterwards 8th Lord 

 Napier. A great deal of the material of this work was communi- 

 cated in the form of Letters by Alexander Laidlaw, shepherd at 

 Bowerhope in Yarrow. At paye 274 is the following Note, 

 referring to page 41. In this letter Laidlaw remarks : — 



" That 1802 was remarkable for a certain species of grub-worm eating 

 the grass ; and, except in some kind of boggy land, the grass was almost 

 totally consumed. They (the worms) were so thick in the ground that 

 one would have covered 10 of them with the palm of the hand. I fed a 

 few of them by desire of the late Dr Mungo Park, in a crystal bottle. 

 After undergoing the usual metamorphosis into a chrysalis, they emerged 

 beautiful butterflies, laid about 100 eggs and died. I do not know to what 

 species they belonged. They were only found in Yarrow-head, part of 

 Tweedsmuir, and part of Ettrick, and only happened once before in the 

 memory of the oldest inhabitants. I have seen them rarely since, and 

 only a few at a time." 



