Report of the Consulting Entomologist for 1885. 
311 
sible to obtain a portion of the grass crop for w inter use in such 
a state as to equal the effect of summer-fed grass for the purposes 
of the dairy. 
It remains for the Judges heartily to congratulate the Council 
of the Royal Agricultural Society of England in that a marked 
success has attended their competition for the best systems of 
preserving fodder crops. ^May the British farmer generally 
reap the benefit which results from contests of this kind ! Our 
thanks, as Judges, are expressly due to the competitors and 
their agents, for their invariable hospitality and readiness to 
give information for the purposes of this Report. We were 
often struck by the enterprise and skill displayed by most of 
the competitors. This should make us hopeful for the future of 
British farming. 
IX. — Report of the Consulting Entomologist of the Royal Agricul- 
tural Society for 1885. By INIiss Eleaxor A. Oemerod, 
F.R.Met.Soc. Dunster Lodge, Spring Grove, Isleworth. 
I BEG to submit, as a summary of the work of the present year, 
a list of the crop insects regarding which enquiry has been 
made, with a few remarks as to points newly brought forward. 
Attacks noticed have been — 
To Corn or Grass. — Aphides in unusual numbers ; and, on oats 
as well as wheat, corn thrips, red maggot of two species, wire- 
worm, but this last not as much reported as in some previous 
years ; daddy long-legs grubs, millipedes, or false wire-worms 
(these are not true insects) ; antler moth caterpillars over an area 
of about seven miles by five in Selkirkshire ; the small chafer 
beetle, sometimes known as the field or garden chafer, Phyllo- 
pertha horticola (of which the maggots are very destructive to 
grass roots), in a flock of many thousands on a potato field near 
Northwich, and also the caterpillar of the " Small Swift Moth," 
which is sometimes very injurious to the roots of grass as well 
as to various kinds of root crops in the spring. 
To Mangolds. — Black aphides, popularly mistaken for the 
collier or bean aphis, mangold maggot slightly reported, milli- 
pedes, and, likewise, observations with accompany ing specimens, 
of the attack of the Steropus madidus, a nocturnal feeding beetle, 
previously believed to be only carnivorous. 
To Beans and Clover. — Aphides on beans, and attacks of 
Sitonas, commonly known as pea, bean, and clover weevils, in 
the beetle state to the bean leafage, and in the grub state to 
clover roots. 
