PREFACE. 
-4- 
In once again submitting my Annual Report, I have, as in 
previous years, to offer my hearty thanks, both to the many 
friends who have kindly aided me by their communications, and 
also to the Agricultural Press for the great assistance that their 
support gives to the subject of prevention of farm insects, and 
the encouragement which the courteous assistance they grant 
gives to myself in the work. 
The chief features of the insect attacks of the past season 
have been the great amount of Aphides or Plant Lice, which 
swarmed on most crops in consequence of the long drought 
being favourable to their increase. Surface-caterpillars also 
were unusually destructive throughout the autumn, and but for 
the snow, which in melting brings wet alternately with frost to 
bear on them (a state of things especially destructive to them), 
a further visitation was to be expected this spring. Some kinds 
of injurious crop insects, not previously noticed in these Reports, 
have been brought forward, and amongst various notes of habits, 
means of prevention, &c., which have been reported, I wish 
particularly to draw attention to the observation at p. 21 on 
absence of injury from Daddy Longlegs grubs where the land 
was thoroughly trampled by cattle. The observations of each 
year show more and more the importance of autumn measures 
to destroy, in embryo, the pests that, if left alone, raise (as 
a regularly recurring loss and trouble) the various attacks which 
devastate crops sown after broken-up pasture. 
The Warble investigation, it will be seen, has much advanced. 
I am greatly obliged by the widespread assistance which has 
been afforded me in this important matter, and which I have 
more fully acknowledged in the special paper on the subject; 
but I should also notice that a very satisfactory amount of 
practical and serviceable knowledge of how to deal with this 
attack, as well as of mere scientific detail, was shown in the 
