affecting the Corn- Crops. 
481 
stacked corn have no difficulty in finding situations suited to their 
wants. I have repeatedly endeavoured to rear the caterpillars, 
but they always shrivelled up and died.* I once, however, found 
some larvre in January so exceedingly like these, if not the same, 
under the bark of willow-trees outside of a stack-yard, which sub- 
sequently spun up there and produced Noctua {Caradrina) cubi- 
cularis, that I am strongly impressed with the conviction this is 
the moth which produces these destructive caterpillars, and Mr. 
Westwood strengthening my opinion,f I have ventured to figure 
it, trusting that it may induce some one to endeavour to rear and 
ascertain the true parent, that, should we be in error, it may thus 
lead to good results. 
The above species belongs to the Order Lepidoptera, the 
Family Noctuid^, and is named by Hiibner 
6. Caradrina cubicularis (the pale mottled willow-moth) ; it is 
also the Noctua quadripunctata of Fabricius, and the Noctua segetum. 
of Esper.;|; It is of a brownish mouse-colour ; antennae like bristles ; 
eyes fuscous ; palpi short and scaly, with a pitch-coloured patch on 
the outside ; abdomen rather slender, obtuse at the apex in the males, 
conical in the females : wings lying horizontally and incumbent in 
repose, forming an elongated triangle, superior long and narrowed 
at the base, with three irregular and crenated transverse lines, 
forming little black spots on the costa ; the first is near the base, 
the second before the middle, and the third beyond it ; between 
these is a round and kidney-shaped spot ; between the third and 
the posterior margin, which has a line of black dots, is a sinuated 
ochreous line, reddish and suffused on the inside, the external space 
dark fuscous ; inferior wings pearly white, slightly tinged with 
brown next the cilia, the nervures brownish : length 6 lines, expanse 
14 or 15 lines (fig. 18, the male). 
This moth is common in hay-fields and about hay-ricks in May, 
June, and July, as well as on willows in gardens, &c. 
I have also figured the larva of a saw-fly which was found in 
abundance on the ears of wheat near Cardiff in Glamorganshire, 
and as there was something mysterious in its visit, and I have never 
* Having removed into the country, I hope to be better able to trace the 
metamorphoses of noxious insects, and request in futme that all communi- 
cations may be addressed to me at Hayes, near Uxbridge, Middlesex. 
t He says in a letter, " My impression is that they are the larvae of 
Caradrina cubicularis, as I have specimens of that insect reared from cater- 
pillars found in stacked wheat, of which I have the drawing and speci- 
mens." I likewise remember when Mr. Raddon exhibited a large number 
of these caterpillars at a meeting of the Linnaean Society, which had issued 
in myriads from stacks near Bristol, where they did incredible mischief by 
feeding on the wheat ; he stated that they lived through the winter, and 
were the produce of Noctua cubicularis, if 1 mistake not. 
X Curtis's Brit. Ent., fol. and pi. 651. 
