Entomological Society, 



8183 



the perfect insect gnaws open the cocoon and escapes.' Our author then gives a 

 description of the perfect insect, and further adds, ' There was an incredible number 

 of these larvae in 1860. From observations made at Utrecht and at Leyden, there 

 seems no doubt that the first brood in May attacked exclusively the leaves of the 

 gooseberry, some of the bushes being quite stripped ; and that the second generation, 

 appearing in July, principally confined itself to the currant, but small numbers having 

 been seeu on the gooseberry. I observed this myself iu a garden where the two plants 

 v.ere growing intermixed. Both larvae and imagos were decidedly of but one species.' 

 The truth of this latter observation, that the larva? attack both gooseberry and currant 

 trees (the former at an earlier period of the year), is quite borne out by my own obser- 

 vation this summer. The second brood having now just made their appearance, 

 I will detail a mode by which their ravages may be greatly lessened. 



" The eggs— while, elliptical — are laid on the under surface, along the ribs of the 

 leaf, to the number sometimes of I '20 on a single leaf; the larvae, when hatched, 

 during the first twenty- four hours, make each one a little round hole. The leaf then 

 presents the appearance of having been riddled by No. 7 shot. The second day the 

 holes are larger, less regular, and soon coalescing ; the larger veins only at the tip of 

 the leaf remain undemolished. This is the critical time to destroy the brood. By 

 gathering these leaves daily as the caterpillars are hatched (for they keep coming out 

 during a fortnight or three weeks, according to the period at which the eggs were laid) 

 the whole of the brood will be easily destroyed. The peculiar appearance of the leaf 

 renders the gathering of the brood remarkably easy ; while the fact that at this early 

 period they are all together on one leaf, and that a week later they will be more scat- 

 tered over the tree, as also that their destruction of the foliage is then at the mini- 

 mum, peculiarly points out this period as the one most suitable to their destruction. 

 I should say that on the 19th of July, from about ten trees in my own garden, I 

 picked off fifty to seventy leaves, each containing from five to seventy eggs, and young 

 larvae just hatched. Since then I have daily picked off about ten leaves similarly 

 attacked. If each possessor of a garden would thus destroy the young brood, we 

 should have no more sawflies next year to trouble us. Other methods are advan- 

 tageously used at a later period for their destruction ; such are hand-picking, shaking 

 the stems, when the larvae drop down and can be killed ; syringing the under surface 

 of the leaves with alum and water, or watering the larvae when shaken down with the 

 s-.me mixture: but all these methods are put in force when the damage is half done 

 aud when the larvae are widely distributed over the trees, and are insignificant when 

 c mpared with that which I now advocate for nipping the evil in the bud. Let us 

 ] ow look to our currant trees and next spring to our gooseberry trees, and we shall 

 get rid of the enemy." 



Paper read. 



The President read a paper entitled " A List of the Genera and Species belonging 

 to the Family Cryptocerida?, with Descriptions of New Species." — J. W. D. 



A Visit to Pratas Island.— In the * Zoologist' for 1860 (Zool. 7236) I contributed 

 a list of animals observed on Pratas Island, situated at one side of the Pratas Reef, a 

 coral formation in the China Sea. Since then I have come across a short account of 



