274 The N.Z. Journal of Science and Technology. [Jan. 
larvae, along with the native earth-worms ( Maoridrilus and Octochaetus), 
were encountered in breaking up a piece of virgin ground. Though the 
introduced earth-worm ( Helodrilus caliginosus) had arrived, it was far from 
abundant, and was only met with in cultivated ground. As the cicadas 
were conspicuous insects of heavy flight, they would easily fall victims 
to the birds, and I have watched a sparrow pecking at a fluttering cicada 
on the ground. A large beetle with long antennae (Pnonplus reticularis), 
which I have seen many years ago on the shop-windows at night in 
Princes Street, where it was attracted by the light, has not been in evidence 
for years in the immediate neighbourhood, though it is still to be found 
where remnants of the native bush linger. The local disappearance is easily 
accounted for by the destruction of the adjacent forest, as its larvae bored 
in the timber-trees. Of the butterflies, a little blue one ( Chrysophanus 
boldenarum ), another one ( Argyrophenga antipodum) resembling the British 
meadow-brown (Coenonympha davus ), and a small copper ( Chrysophanus 
sallustius) are still to be occasionally seen, but were much more abundant 
in the immediate neighbourhood of Dunedin than they are now, whilst 
the red admiral (Vanessa gonerilla) is as frequently to be seen as it 
was fifty years ago. No doubt increased cultivation of grasslands and 
grazing are responsible for the lessening of the numbers of the three first- 
named. 
When resident in 1866 at Hamilton’s Diggings, situated on the side of 
the Rock and Pillar Range at an elevation of about 1,500 ft., I saw, early 
in the summer or late spring, hordes of black hairy caterpillars feeding 
wherever the grass was short and green, as alongside tracks and on the 
sides of the miners’ water-races. So numerous were they that many fell 
into the races and were carried in numbers down the streams. These later 
produced a strong-winged diurnal-flying moth, closely resembling in flight 
a moth I knew in my boyhood in Scotland as the wood-tiger moth ( Nemeophila 
plantaginis). I have been unable to identify it from Hudson’s New Zealand 
Moths and Butterflies, but it was not unlike that figured under the name 
Metacrias erichrysa, though, so far as my memory serves me, it is not quite 
the same, and Mr. Howes suggests that it was probably Metacrias liuttoni 
or M. strategica. I have heard of a black hairy caterpillar which many 
years ago did immense damage to the barley crops in the Oamaru district, 
and have sometimes wondered if it were the same. My informant was the 
late Mr. John Reid, of Elderslie, who stated that large armies of these cater¬ 
pillars invaded the barley-fields before the grain was ripe, and that they 
climbed the stems of the barley, ate them through just underneath the ear, 
which fell to the ground, when the caterpillar also dropped, climbed another 
stem, and repeated the operation. So numerous were they that they ruined 
the crop. Whether they were the same or not, the barley-destroying moth 
is now unknown, thanks possibly to the starling (Sturnus vulgaris) ; and I 
think it probable that the caterpillars I saw in the neighbourhood of 
Hamilton’s have shared the same fate, but, as I have never visited the 
locality since I left it in the end of 1866, I am unable to decide the question. 
Whilst the eradication of the pest was popularly attributed to the starling, 
scientists may assert that no bird will eat woolly caterpillars, and suggest 
that ichneumon flies or fungoid diseases may be the cause of the disappear¬ 
ance. It seems to me that such causes would only decimate the ranks of 
the caterpillars, which would after some years reattain their full strength; 
but if the cause were a new enemy, such as an introduced bird, the 
destruction would be more complete. Doubtless the hairy covering of many 
