MAGPIE MOTH. 
87 
coloured. The very gay colouring distinguishes it clearly from the 
greenish or green and black-spotted caterpillar of the Gooseberry 
Sawfly, which is still more common and destructive, and the habit of 
the Magpie caterpillar of raising itself into an upright loop as it 
walks is another distinction. 
The egg is laid on the leaves during summer, and the caterpillars 
appear towards August or September, and feed for a while. Before 
winter they secure themselves either by spinning themselves up in 
leaves, which hang by spun threads from the boughs, or by dropping 
with the leaves and sheltering themselves at the surface of the ground. 
Next spring the caterpillars come out again and feed on the new 
leafage, till towards May or June they spin a light cocoon, in which 
they turn to a yellow chrysalis, which presently changes to black and 
orange colour, from which the moth comes out towards the middle of 
the summer. 
The habit of the caterpillar of wintering on or under the food-bush 
is the one to be acted upon to get rid of it thoroughly. Very early 
autumn pruning and dressing of the ground beneath the bushes should 
be avoided. I have notes from two localities where this was customary 
of caterpillar-attack being bad, and the reason seems obvious. If the 
caterpillars have either not become thoroughly torpid, or the weather 
still is open enough for them to re-esfcablish themselves in shelters, 
many will escape by creeping away or sheltering in the disturbed 
surface, which otherwise would have been destroyed by winter opera¬ 
tions. If the bushes are properly pruned and all hanging leaves 
cleared, and likewise the surface-soil with the fallen leaves upon it 
scraped off, and either carried quite away or so treated that the cater¬ 
pillars in it will be destroyed, the plan will answer as well to check 
repetition of the attack next spring as it does with that of Gooseberry 
Sawfly caterpillar. The pests being absolutely cleared out from under 
the bushes, there is nothing to come up in any stage of life. 
All the measures of handpicking, shaking down, and destroying 
the caterpillars under the bushes, dusting with various applications, 
dressing under the bushes in winter or early spring with lime or gas- 
lime, &c., which are found serviceable in checking the attack of 
Gooseberry Sawfly caterpillar, and of which an abstract was given 
from previous Reports in that for 1884, pp. 40-48, would be equally 
serviceable in lessening damage from Magpie caterpillars, which are 
easily kept in check by moderate care. 
