152 ZOOLOGY. 



clear days. The female lays her numerous bright 

 green eggs, some four hundred in number, separately, 

 on the leaves of the above-named plants. The cater- 

 pillars are not always easy to see, owing to their 

 greenish colour; under favourable conditions they 

 may pass through the whole of their development up 

 to the moth stage in from six to seven weeks. In 

 some years they appear in such large numbers, that 

 almost all the cultivated plants found in the fields 

 of an infested region are utterly spoilt by them, 

 excepting the corn. Natwral enemies : Starlings, all 

 sharp-beaked singing birds haunting fields ; sparrows ; 

 ground beetles, rove beetles, and the larvae of these 

 families; several ichneumon flies, parasitic fungi. 

 Remedies : Driving in poultry, where practicable. 

 Collecting, e.g. by means of a machine invented by 

 L. Dehoff", of Gutenberg, near Halle. " Several troughs 

 with steep inner walls are fastened together by laths, 

 at distances equal to those between adjacent furrows, 

 and besoms are fixed to the laths. These troughs are 

 drawn along like sledges by a horse walking in the 

 furrows, and the caterpillars are swept by the besoms 

 into the troughs, from which they are collected in 

 sacks at the ends of the furrows. With this cheap 

 machine about twelve acres per day can be cleared " 

 (Taschenberg). 



Family : Pyralidse (Snout Moths). 



Small moths with thread-like antenna, comb-like 

 in the males of a few species, with tolerably large 

 eyes, and Very large labial palps often stretched out 

 in front like a beak (Fig. 103). Fore wings of an 

 elongated triangular shape. Wing booklets. Legs 

 tolerably long. Caterpillars slightly hairy, with four 

 or five pairs of pro-legs. 



The Rye Snout Moth (Pyralis secalis). 

 Moth : I of an inch long, span of wings 1^ inches. 



