72 
First Report on Economic Zoology. 
The Pear and Cherry Sawfly or Slugworm. 
{Eriocampa limacina, Cameron.) 
A few enquiries were received during the past year regarding the 
Pear and Cherry Sawfly ( Eriocampa limacina). This fruit tree pest 
has not been so abundant as usual during the past summer and 
autumn. In some districts where it is usually harmful it has 
scarcely been noticed. One correspondent writing from Sitting- 
bourne, Kent, asked for information concerning these pests, “ found 
in numbers on and destroying his plum and cherry trees,” and for the 
best means of preventing and destroying them. Their normal food 
plants are cherry, pear and sometimes hawthorn. It has not been 
notified before as injurious to plum, although Miss Ormerod mentions 
plum, and sometimes peach, as being occasional food plants, and on 
one occasion it is recorded on the quince. Cameron, in his work on 
“ British Phytophagous Hymenoptera ” (vol. i. p. 225), mentions 
other food plants, as Rubies, Amygdalus , Quercus and Betula. 
There is no doubt that this insect is very susceptible to damp 
weather and thus has not been nearly so harmful during the past 
year. 
Considerable relief from this pest has been reported by adopting 
the plan of removing and burning the surface soil during the winter 
months from beneath trees that had been attacked. 
Notes on Fruit Pests in Orchards at Wisbech. 
Some interesting notes on the ravages of insect pests were sent, 
together with an enquiry as to the cause of the damage, from 
Mr. B. W. Gatherwood, of Wisbech. In this letter he states that — 
Plum blossom was cut off by frost, but apple trees mixed with the 
above were comparatively all right, except for a few caterpillars, of what I 
took to be the Winter Moth, on the 24th of May, the trees showing every 
sign of a plentiful crop of apples. I may say in the last week of April 
and the first week in May we syringed twice with Paris green (1 in 200). 
When I returned home on the 7th of June my apple trees and some of 
the plum presented an appearance as if a hot blast of air had passed over 
the whole garden, withering all shoots, leaves, and flowers ; the few leaves 
left were all riddled with holes, leaving only the ribs of the leaf. I could 
find no insects then or since except a few green caterpillars. I am quite 
at a loss to know the cause of this wholesale destruction. I should be 
glad to have a reply from you on the subject, and you would be con- 
ferring on the district a great boon if you would suggest a remedy. 
I firmly believe if we had kept dressing the trees with the solution 
mentioned until the apple blossom had gone we should have had a crop. 
