90 
PEAR. 
Slugworm of Pear and Cherry Sawfly. Tenthredo cerasi, Linn. 
Tenthredo cerasi. 
Slugworm and Sawfly magnified, with lines showing nat. length; cocoon.* 
During the past season I received an unusual number of applica¬ 
tions regarding Pear Sawfly caterpillar. These caterpillars are 
exceedingly voracious, and whilst with a little care they may easily be 
got rid of, or the chrysalids to which they turn may be cleared from 
the upper part of the soil beneath the infested trees, on the other 
hand, if nothing is done by way of remedy, the foliage of the trees is 
greatly injured, and the attack is likely to recur year after year. 
They may easily be known by their peculiar shape and slimy 
appearance, from which they take their common name of “ Slug- 
worm.” Until their last moult they are of a blackish colour and 
lumpy shape, much like that of a slug, swollen or enlarged behind the 
head, or may be at the middle or nearer the tail. They have ten 
pairs of feet,—that is to say, three pairs of claw-feet, which are on 
the three segments next the head, and seven pairs of sucker-feet, so 
that each segment excepting the head and tail, and the fourth segment 
from the head, has a pair of claw- or sucker-feet, but from the small 
size of the grub they are little noticeable. When full-grown it is 
about half an inch or rather less in length, and looks as above- 
mentioned somewhat like a slug, or still more like a lump of wet 
blackish dirt run together, and largest at one end; but at this stage 
of life the Slugworm entirely changes its appearance. , It casts its 
skin and appears as a yellowish coloured caterpillar, no longer slimy 
nor smooth, but wrinkled across. 
The caterpillars now go down into the ground and there they spin 
themselves up in cocoons, from which, in the case I am quoting from, 
the Sawflies came out in the following year in July. 
* The above very excellent figure is from one in Yol. ii. of the ‘ Gardener’s 
Chronicle,’ which I was favoured with permission to use by the Editor some years 
ago.—E. A. 0. 
