Ormerod : The Gooseberry Caterpillar. 101 



is at the same time a thoroughly good example of how, by a knowledge 

 of the habits of a so-called pest, also a little thought on the reasons for 

 good or bad action of the remedies, an injurious attack may be kept 

 down with very little trouble and hardly any expense. In this case 

 infinite trouble is yearly taken in pinching the grubs, shaking, dusting, 

 syringing, trampling, and all kinds of remedial means, too often with 

 very little effect, except in the case of Hellebore powder, which if 

 properly done and with good powder, appears to get rid of the attack 

 very surely, but at the same time has the disadvantage that if applied 

 near the time when the berries are to be of service for table use (unless 

 great care is taken in clearing them of the powder), the eaters are in 

 danger of severe — possibly fatal — illness. A far simpler course is to 

 clear away the coming brood in the larva state from beneath the bushes. 

 If we start the attack — say of 1882 — from its very beginning it stands 

 thus: — In the autumn of 18 J I the caterpillars of the last brood when 

 full fed went down from the bushes into the ground, perhaps only two 

 inches deep, but if the soil was light, possibly to a depth of six or 

 eight inches. Here they made themselves each a cocoon, or outer 

 casing of a kind of secretion, which formed a bluntly oval brown case, 

 about half-an-inch long, in which each grub or larva passed the winter 

 still in its larval state. When spring came, and the gooseberry and 

 currant bushes were coming into leaf, then the grub changed to the 

 chrysalis, and the chrysalis shortly develojDed, and from it came the 

 perfect gooseberry sawfly, to lay its eggs and thus start a brood of 

 caterpillars on the young leafage just ready for them to feed on. Here 

 we see at once how to forestall attack, and practically the point is 

 worked forward in some of the gooseberry growing districts near Isle- 

 worth. If the soil is removed from beneath the gooseberry bushes 

 after the fall of the leaf, with this soil we remove the grubs, and are 

 just in that proportion freer from attack next year. But some degree 

 of care is necessary, and want of this at times leaves the larvse as much 

 in possession (for all practical purposes) as if nothing had been done. 

 The earth and contained grubs ought to be so disposed of by burning, 

 throwing where it will be trampled on, or other means, that these 

 grubs will be destroyed, or they will develope as if nothing had been 

 done, and if left near the bushes, the sawflies will (as in previous 

 generations) as soon as developed just walk or fly to the new leafage 

 and start the new course of injury. A good example of this was given 

 in a case where, last autumn, the earth was disturbed and removed in 

 due course from beneath the bushes of a gooseberry ground near Isle- 

 worth, but it was not taken away. Month after month it lay in lines 



