136 
E. W. SILVESTEE-EEPOET ON INSECTS 
Orchard fruit-trees suffered severely from insect pests, and the 
experience of the year has added materially to our knowledge of 
the insect foes of the apple crop. Though our county cannot rank 
as a fruit-growing one, still enough fruit is grown to render 
economical measures of preservation desirable, so the adoption of 
Miss Ormerod’s advice in some of the Gloucestershire orchards, 
near Cheltenham, where about 100,000 trees have been banded 
with cart-grease to check the attack of the wingless winter-moth, 
is worth recording, and it is still more satisfactory to note that 
millions of these pests have thus been caught and destroyed. 
The past year has seen a new weapon of defence put into the 
hands of cultivators in the form of Strawson’s air-power dis¬ 
tributor, and the degree of perfection which this ingenious machine 
has now attained can leave no doubt that it may become the means 
of saving many hundreds of thousands of pounds annually which 
were formerly lost through the ravages of injurious insects. 
A great advance has taken place in the application of methods of 
prevention against the attack of the ox-warble-fly. The intense 
pain and the loss of condition occasioned to the animal, and the 
depreciation in value of the warbled hide, render this pest a legiti¬ 
mate object of attack on both humane and commercial grounds, 
and the tormented animals would be truly grateful if they could 
know the pains that are being taken for their comfort by the circu¬ 
lation of the pamphlet on ‘ The Ox-Warble-.Fly,’ which has done 
so much to call the attention of farmers and stock-owners to the 
easy remedy by which this attack may be avoided. 
Many members of our Society must have noticed last spring the 
desolate appearance of the oak trees just as they were coming into 
leaf. This was due to the caterpillars of Tortrix viridana , which 
feed in such numbers on the young leaves as to strip the trees 
of their foliage, and retard the growth of the first shoots, entirely 
ruining the acorn crop of the season. Miss Ormerod describes 
them thus : “ The caterpillars are at first greenish grey, or lead- 
coloured ; when full grown they are dull green with dusky spots, 
and about half an inch long. They have the power of rolling the 
tip of the leaf and spinning it together into a cylinder, within 
which when full-fed they turn to chrysalids, but meanwhile on 
alarm, or as a matter of choice, they let themselves down by scores 
or hundreds, by means of silken threads, for about seven or eight 
feet, and sway about as the wind may waft them beneath the in¬ 
fested boughs, catching on any passing object, and also being a prey 
to many kinds of birds; but if nothing else happens they crawl 
presently back again, each up its own line to the bough. The 
chrysalis is brown, and is formed in a silken cocoon on a leaf. The 
moth, which appears towards the end of June, is about an inch in 
the expanse of the fore-wings, with the head, the body between 
the wings, and the fore-wings, of a light green; the hind-wings 
are brownish, and the fringes of the wings, as well as a line on the 
front edge of the foremost pair, are whitish.” Mr. Willis reports 
these caterpillars at Harpenden, and Mr. James in the neigbour- 
