1904.] 



Snow Flies. 



171 



and shoots has hooks on the abdominal legs. The head is dark, 

 and the next segment has a dark plate ; there are hairs on the 

 head and the various segments. 



We owe our knowledge of the stages of its life history, from 

 the adult to the appearance of the caterpillars in the shoots, to 

 Dr. A. T. Chapman. The moths may be found in May flying 

 in the near neighbourhood of the currant bushes. The females 

 lay their whitish lemon-shaped eggs in the young currant fruit, 

 and the caterpillars on hatching feed on the seed. More than 

 one caterpillar may be present in a single fruit. After feeding 

 for a time the caterpillar, still very small and far from having 

 completed its growth, burrows out of the fruit in June and July 

 and spins a white case, which is attached to old persistent bud 

 scales and to bark. Protected by this case the caterpillar enters 

 upon a resting period which lasts into the next spring, when the 

 partly grown larva leaves its case and bores into the buds and 

 tunnels the young shoots. Here it renews its feeding, and in 

 April and the beginning of May completes its growth, the 

 result of its presence being a non-development of the flower buds, 

 and the withering, drooping, and death of the young shoots. 

 The full-grown caterpillar passes into the chrysalis condition, and 

 later the moths issue from the cocoon and proceed to pairing 

 and egg laying. 



Attacks are chiefly recorded upon red currant, but in 1896 

 Miss Ormerod chronicled an attack on a black currant. 



As a preventive and remedial measure spraying with strong 

 paraffin emulsion in the autumn or winter would possibly be 

 successful in destroying the caterpillars sheltering in their cases, 

 and hand-picking and burning the infested drooping shoots 

 before the pests have escaped should be practised as a preventive 

 against future infestation. 



The snow flies (A ley \r odes) are small hemiptera which, when 

 mature, look very like powdery moths. They are common 

 pests under glass and in the open. They 

 Snow Flies. may be found all through the year, but 

 occur in greatest abundance in the late 

 summer and early autumn. When disturbed they rise in the 



