Reports of the Honorary Consulting Entomologist. 701 
properties. But as the expense of dressing is very heavy, I may 
add I have had notes of failure of effect from the following 
applications, namely : — of salt, at the rate of 3 cwt. the acre, 
over a 17-acre field ; of heavy dressing of soot to 3 acres ; of 
quicklime to 4 acres ; and a dressing of salt of 2 tons, mixed 
with half a ton of nitrate of soda, on about 12 acres of land, did 
not kill the grubs, though it thinned them. 
Where the crop has been so totally destroyed that re-sowing 
was necessary, I have replied to enquiry on this point, that it 
would be mere waste of money to sow till the grubs were 
cleared ; also I have suggested that scarifying the surface, so as 
to turn up the leather jackets to the birds, would be better than 
ploughing, as these grubs can stand want of all food, excepting 
what they may obtain from the earth, for certainly three weeks, 
and would gradually work their way up without having been 
injured. 
I have not as yet advised hand-picking to clear infested 
ground before cultivation for re-sowing, but I fully believe that 
where the grubs are to be found (as sometimes is the case) as 
numerously as upwards of thirty just below the surface in two 
feet in a drill row, that it would answer thoroughly to have them 
collected at some small sum per stated measure. 
Notes have not been as yet sent in of the effects of nitrate of 
soda used alone ; but as I have found on experiment that the 
immediate efTect on the grub was to make it entirely evacuate 
all its contents, it might very likely act as a deterrent as well as 
a fertiliser. Mixed with dissolved bones, it has proved service- 
able in raising good grass free from attack where the ground 
had been re-sown after attack. I have also found a light 
sprinkling of gas-lime, which had been exposed upwards of a 
month to air, useful in preventing attack being set by the daddy 
longlegs' flies when present on grass, and for autumn use a 
heavy dressing of spent gas-lime on grass, or fresh gas-lime 
where the land is to be broken up, answers well. 
Ivjury to Osiers. — An enquiry of some importance has been 
sent from Northallerton regarding injury to shoots or stocks in 
osier grounds from the attack of a red maggot, nearly allied 
to the red maggot of the wheat, which proved (as far as could 
be seen in this stage) to be the larva of the Cecidomyia salici- 
per da of Dufour. 
The grubs are oval, legless, and orange coloured, and furnished 
with a dark-coloured horny four-pronged process, placed below 
the head. These grubs lie in small cells (which they have 
scraped for themselves in some way, and I rather think, from 
examination, by the help of the above process) just beneath the 
bark or within the wood of the shoot, and in the specimens sent 
