THE ENTOMOLOGIST'S 
WEEKLY INTELLIGENCER. 
No. 55.] 
OBSERVATION AND INFERENCE. 
A correspondent in the Isle of Wight 
writes, “ The farmers about here are 
predicting a very severe winter.” We 
are not going to discuss the causes 
which have induced the Vectisian agri- 
culturists to arrive at this conclusion ; 
we have ourselves before now been 
guilty of predicting cold weather which 
has not come to pass, and therefore are 
shy of hazarding conjectures as to the 
future; but we cannot shut our eyes 
to a fact which we have not only 
noticed ourselves, but to which our 
correspondents in various parts of the 
country have likewise called our atten- 
tion. 
It is a well-known fact that many 
insects pass the winter in the larva 
state : these larvse feed in autumn and 
spring (some indeed feed also through 
the winter, but the greater part of them 
are then fasting). Now if we consider 
the case of a larva which is hatched 
in September and is to be full-fed in 
May, it is evident that so much of its 
growth has to take place before the 
winter, and so much after. Now, in 
this climate, our winter is essentially a 
variable quantity, — it varies both in in- 
tensity and duration. A few years ago 
it set in with great severity in the 
[Price Id. 
middle of February, and the snow which 
then fell was not all melted at the end 
of March ; hence larvse which had been 
reckoning on that period of six. weeks 
for the purpose of feeding up must have 
been disappointed. 
Now what is it that we observe at 
the present time? Simply this; that 
the larvae of one particular genus of 
small moths ( Colvophora ), known by 
their case-making propensities, many of 
which are in the habit of passing the 
winter in a juvenile slate, have this 
season already attained an unusual de- 
gree of development. One correspondent 
writes, “ Is double-brooded ? I 
find the larvse nearly full-fed.” Ano- 
ther says, “ The larvse of are 
already much larger than I ever re- 
member to have seen them in autumn.” 
Clearly, then, these larvse are doing 
their spring work before the winter 
(like the industrious boy, who, afraid 
of being late in the morning, learns his 
lesson over-night); and it is evident 
that, should the months of February 
and March be again a season of ice 
and snow, the larvse of which we are 
speaking will be fully prepared for it. 
Now the rapid growth of these larvse, 
which is actually leading to the detec- 
tion of several species which hitherto, 
from their small size in autumn, had 
SATUEDAY, OCTOBEE 17, 1857. 
D 
