I 10 



The Irish Naturalist. ^ November, 



SOME IRISH SAWFLIES. 



BY REV. W. F. JOHNSON, M.A., F.E.S. 



Very little is known about Irish Sawflies. All the records 

 of them from Ireland with which I am acquainted are to be 

 found in the Irish Naturalist, the Entomologists' Monthly 

 Magazine, and in Mr. Morley's Report on Hymenoptera in 

 the Clare Island Survey.^ This last named paper gives the 

 bulk of the records of species, viz., 53 ; in the other notices 

 8 species are added, making a total of 61 species, and, as 

 there are considerably over 300 species recorded from the 

 British Islands, a good deal remains to be done to determine 

 how many belong to Ireland. 



Sawflies are to be found in nearly every hedgerow, also 

 among bushes and in woods. They are rather sluggish 

 insects, moving but little except in bright sunshine, and are 

 by no means active on the wing, so that they are pretty 

 easy to catch when flying. When sitting they can often be 

 caught with the finger and thumb ; but they have a most 

 objectionable habit of dropping off their perch when alarmed 

 into the herbage beneath, and there it is usually impossible 

 to find them. They can also be taken by sweeping among 

 herbage, and, in dull weather, by beating bushes or trees. 

 Their larvae feed on various plants and trees, many are to be 

 found on various species of willow ; others feed on grass or 

 rushes and various low plants, e.g., scabious, buttercup, etc. 

 In a great many cases the larvae are unknown, so there is 

 a good opportunity for research. Sawfly larvae can always 

 be distinguished from those of butterflies and moths by the 

 greater number of legs ; larvae of Sawflies have from 18 

 to 22 legs, those of butterflies and moths 16 at most. 



Sawflies are so called because the females have a little 

 apparatus, serrated like a saw, with which* they make 

 incisions in leaves and tlierein lay their eggs. This applies 

 only to the true Sawflies, for Sirex, in the j)lacc of the saw. 



Proceedings, R.I, A., vol. xxxi., part 24. 



