110 
Ohsercations on the various Insects 
plants, ospecially those of corn ; from whence they are called in 
Germany " the Winter Corn-moth.'' In that country they are 
sometimes very destructive to the autumn-sown corn, and likewise 
in Russia, from whence they have spread over Poland into north- 
ern Germany and Prussia ;* and so great were their numbers at 
intervals, that many districts have been threatened with famine 
from their ravages. This caterpillar is likewise a troublesome 
visiter to the gardener as well as the farmer, for it not only de- 
stroys the corn and turnip crops by eating vip the roots and leaves, 
but it attacks lettuces, spinach, beet, and also a variety of flower- 
roots, as auriculas, &c., doing the greatest mischief in seedling 
beds. Upon the continent, as the harvest is early, these larvae are 
at that period generally compelled to subsist upon the roots of 
grasses ,but as soon as the corn shoots up in September and Octo- 
ber they resort to the tender roots for food ; and this shows how 
essential it is to keep the land clean, by collecting and burning 
the bent-grass and similar weeds, for in the absence of these it is 
far from improbable that the eggs would not be laid, or, if 
they were, that the caterpillars when hatched would speedily be 
starved to death. They pass the winter in a l^all of earth the 
shape of an egg, formed 2 or 3 inches below the surface, in the 
cavity of which they are completely protected both from frost and 
wet. In the early spring the caterpillars leave their winter-cells 
and again feed, without doing much injury, until the end of May 
or beginning of June, when they finally enter the earth to undergo 
their transformation to a brown chrysalis, in which state they 
generally remain a month, when the moth is produced. The 
seasons and climate, as well as the causes already alluded to, may 
occasi(m a considerable difference in the periods when the perfect 
insect comes forth, for it is said that in France the moth does not 
appear until the end of July or the beginning of August, whereas 
in Austria it is recorded as hatching at the end of June or begin- 
ning of July, as it does in England. 
The economy of this caterpillar has been faithfully related by a 
very careful observer of nature and as his account embodies 
some facts which have not come under my own observation, I 
cannot do better than conclude its history by transcribing his re- 
marks : " The grub is also a very formidable assailant in the more 
advanced state of the (turnip) plant, near to which it forms a 
round hole in a vertical direction (in appearance like that of an 
earth-worm, but open at the top), about 2 or 3 inches deep in 
the earth. At the bottom of this it remains during the day 
(unless it be dark and moist), and at night emerges from its 
* Kollar"s Nat. der Schad. Iiiseeten, p. lOG. 
•!• Mr. H. Le Keux, in Trans. Ent. Soc, vol. ii. p. 32. 
