122 
THE GOOSEBERRY GRUB. 
to look after such leaves, and pick them into 
a hand basket. If you neglect the trees at 
this critical time, each infested leaf will be 
quickly stripped of all its green, the ribs 
alone remaining : the grubs then descend 
its foot-stalk, and, wandering in diffei'ent 
directions, each finds a leaf for himself, and 
the work of devastation begins in earnest. 
" The grub is known to every gardener, 
indeed so well known that you may perhaps 
consider it a Avaste of time and paper to de- 
scribe it ; yet some of your readers may be 
glad of a description, so here it is. There is 
a great difference between the grubs of saw- 
flies — (the gooseberry grub is that of a saw- 
fly) — and the caterpillar of moths, which your 
thorough-paced entomologists don't seem to 
have noticed. The caterpillars of moths and 
butterflies have six legs, and ten, six, or four 
holders, two of which are quite at the endof the 
body, and are very powerful prehensile organs, 
excepting — and the exception establishes the 
rule — in the caterpillars of puss-moths and 
their allies, in which the hinder extremity is 
without these organs, and often elevated in a 
most remarkable manner. In all the grubs 
of saw-flies that I have seen, the tail, or last 
segment of the body, is either without holders, 
or the grub does not use them, but just curls 
its tail on one side, and uses it after the fashion 
of a finger, to steady its hold on the leaf, or 
else sticks it up in the air, and even then the 
extreme end is curled round, though holding 
nothing. The legs are longer than those of 
real caterpillars, and have more joints. The 
gooseberry grub has six legs, (and in this all 
insects that have any legs at all seem to agree,) 
and twelve holders, besides the curled tail : it 
always stands on the edge of the leaf, gener- 
ally on the part where it has just been eating: 
the fore legs are held away from the leaf, and 
move with each movement of the head in 
gnawing, as the grub takes mouthful after 
mouthful. It is amusing to watch one of 
these fellows feeding; he stretches his mouth 
to the furthest point he can possibly reach, 
and then takes mouthfuls by a series of jerks, 
till he has brought his mouth nearly in con- 
tact with his middle pair of legs; he then 
moves it slowly back again, and seems to lick 
or plane the fresh gnawed edge, till he gets 
his neck stretched to its fullest reach, and he 
then brings it up by jerking out mouthfuls as 
before. The middle and hind legs, as well as 
the holders, grasp the leaf very tight during 
the operation of gnawing, which is almost in- 
cessant. The head of the grub is now quite 
black, and its eyes are no longer to be seen ; 
the colour of the body is a dull bluish green, 
with a yellowish space just behind the head, 
and another just before the tail ; it is indis- 
tinctly divided into twelve rings, and each 
ring has a number of warts; these warts, upon 
all the rings except the first, second, third, 
and twelfth, are ranged in three indistinct 
transverse rows, and on each side of each ring 
is one larger and more conspicuous wart ; 
from each wart rises a strong, upright, black 
bristle, and there are several of these bristles 
on the head itself ; the last ring has a black 
plate, ending behind in two short rather 
hooked points. 
" When about half an inch in length, the 
grub leaves off eating ; a very remarkable 
event, for its appetite is not intermittent, like 
that of almost all other created beings, but a 
continued gnawing, craving, never-ceasing, 
all-consuming propensity. The black head 
separates from the neck and splits down the 
middle, and the skin of the neck also splits, 
thus together making an opening large enough 
to let the grub poke out his new head, which 
feat he forthwith performs, and gazes about 
him, moving his head slowly and majestically 
from side to side, as though he were just 
landed in a new world, though a world totally 
unworthy any expression of wonder or ap- 
proval : after the head comes the body, which 
is wriggled through the opening by tedious, 
laborious, and seemingly painful struggles. 
When the skin is completely cast, the grub 
has none of the black spots which before dis- 
tinguished it ; the warts and black hairs are 
present, but the warts are colourless : the 
head is clear as glass, and the two black eyes, 
so conspicuous in the egg and newly-hatched 
grub, are again visible. In about twenty 
minutes the black spots begin to appear, and 
in about four hours become as distinct and 
the head as black as before the moult. When 
the grub has regained its colour, it again 
begins to eat, and eats away night and day 
without stopping, for four or five days more. 
It then sickens again for its last moult, and 
this is performed in the same way as the first: 
but this time the spots, warts, and bristles are 
cast with the skin, and appear no more. The 
grub is now of a pale delicate green colour, 
except the yellow patch near each end, which 
it still retains. It has now done with eating: 
when hard enough and strong enough after 
the last moult, it marches to the stem of the 
bush, and quietly descends till it reaches the 
earth. Sometimes it crawls along a hanging 
branch, and drops from the extremity. 
" The object of gaining the earth is to bur- 
row beneath its surface; and as soon as the grub 
once feels the soil, he begins forcing his way into 
it head foremost, after the fashion of a mole. 
When he is deep enough to answer his pur- 
pose — the depth varying, by the way, from 
two to eight inches, according to the hardness 
or lightness of the soil — he makes a little ob- 
long cell in the earth, and therein spins or 
