610 
Tlie Diamond-back Moth. 
turnips, on Tuesday, July 14, in a field, fearing nothing except that 
we were parched with drought. I was absent for two days till Friday, 
July 17. On Tuesday evening neither I nor any of my workers 
saw any sign of danger or damage ; on Friday morning not a single 
plant in ten acres was safe — all the leaves like lace. The next field 
over the wire fence was swedes begun to meet in drills, and the 
large broad luxuriant leaves were a pitiful sight, and in both fields 
the caterpillar was in millions, and there were evidently two broods 
at work, one | to § of an inch long, thickness, a knitting needle, the 
other J to I inch long and small in proportion. In this field of swedes, 
twenty acres, two acres had been sown a second time with yellow 
seed ; and they grew so rapidly as to be thinned on the seventeenth' 
day after seeding, the quickest in my experience in fifty years. In 
forty-eight hours not one plant left alive. Westward Ho ! was the 
word, and passing two fields of wheat entei'ed on twenty acres saved, 
and these were so extra luxuriant that the moth failed to do so 
much damage, but six aci'es yellow in west of same were all but 
killed ; they are only now recoveruig. This evening I find a late 
division of 9^ acre yellow, all thinned a fortnight ago, not 100 plants 
left, re-sown a week ago with rapeseed between the rows of turnips, 
so that, should the turnips perish, the rape would be well started, 
and I have to report a fine braird of rape growing everywhere, 
whether sown over and among moth-eaten yellows, or where yellows 
are clean away." 
Aberdeenshire. — On July 31, specimens. of caterpillars, with 
attacked turnips, were forwarded to me from the Estate Office, 
Haddo House, Aberdeen, by Mr. George Muirhead, agent of the 
Earl of Aberdeen. It was mentioned that the turnips were first 
found to be affected by the attack about ten days preA-iously, and 
that five of the six acres of the field in which they first appeared liad 
been completely eaten up so far as the leaves were concerned. 
On August 3, Mr. James Harper, of Auchnabo, Slains, Ellon, 
A-berdeenshire, mentioned the caterpillar had done him extraordinary 
harm, and nothing did so well to get rid of it as a severe storm of 
wind and rain from the north, after which the pest almost 
disappeared. 
Island of Islay, N.B. — Early in August, observation of diamond- 
back attack was published as having appeared in Islay, and on 
making inquiry I was favoured on August 11 with the following 
reply from Mr. R. Scot Skirving, of Foreland House, IsJay, N.B., 
who also furnished me with corroborative specimens. " I have to- 
day seen a local farmer, and he .says it has rapidly spread over the 
whole island of Islay, its ravages being very severe in some places and 
very .slight in others. All I have personally seen are near the sea- 
board by the Atlantic, and it certainly is worst there." 
The following communication regards appearance of the diamond- 
back attack in the Island of Jura, which lies N.E. of Islay on the 
west coast of Scotland. Mr. Thomas Eraser, writing from Ardfin, 
Jura (by Greenock), N.B., on August 21, mentioned : "It came 
on our turnips (at least we observed it) the last days of July. 
