202 
E. W. SILVESTER-REPORT OH INSECTS 
brown, horns, and a pair of smoky-grey wings with longitu din al 
veins. It was exactly of an inch in length.” 
As our President, Mr. Campbell, is to read a paper on the Hessian 
fly,* and entomological detail will receive fuller justice at his 
hands, I will pass on to the other notes with which I have been 
favoured, expressing a hope that if any appearance of the Hessian 
fly comes within the notice of any members of this Society, they 
will kindly undertake to see that all the facts are at once for¬ 
warded to me as the County Recorder, or direct to Miss Ormerod at 
Torrington House, St. Albans. 
On my own farm some rape sown in the middle of April was all 
eaten by the turnip-fly before the 4th of May. It was sown again, 
and a genial rain got it out of the power of insect-attack. 
The wire-worm attacked the barley early in May, but a dressing 
of nitrate of soda and a heavy rolling were efficacious in preventing 
any serious harm from being done. 
In the month of September caterpillars were very troublesome 
on the greens in my garden. I had them hand-picked and destroyed. 
The closing remarks of my last year’s report with regard to the 
large swarm of aphides seen at St. Albans and Wheathampstead 
appear to have awakened much interest, for a letter appeared 
in the ‘ Hertfordshire Standard ’ reiterating the statement, and 
mentioning that the writer of the paragraph knew the names of 
the people who saw the swarm. I have not yet been favoured 
with them. It also called forth the following interesting notes from 
Mr. Willis of Harpenden :— 
“ There is certainly no tribe of insects so universally distributed, 
or that multiplies to such an enormous extent, as the aphides or 
plant-lice. 
“ Feeble race ! yet oft 
The sacred sons of vengeance, on whose course 
Corrosive famine waits, and kills the year ! 
“The year 1885 was certainly most prolific in the distribution 
of the great Aphis family in this neighbourhood, almost every 
variety of plant appearing to support its own distinct species of 
aphis, and the ravages committed by this pest were very extensive. 
“ On the first day of August, I myself observed a vast host of 
green and black flies, not ‘ several hundreds of yards in extent, ’ or 
forming ‘a dense black cloud,’ but that filled the atmosphere, 
especially in the vicinity of some chestnut trees in the village of 
Harpenden, with myriads of slender and delicately-winged insects ; 
and some newly painted wood-work in the village became literally 
coated with the creatures. From their appearance they seemed to 
be Aphidius Rupee, a parasitic fly which is said by Curtis to be one 
of the most formidable enemies of the plant-lice, thus pointing to 
the fact that Providence is ever watchful of all his works, and, 
regarding in the smallest as well as the greatest, that balance which 
preserves the order of the universe, provides in years of greater 
* See ante , p. 180. 
