12 
CABBAGE. 
Ichneumon Fly of Large Cabbage Butterfly. Microgaster 
glomeratus, Linn. 
1—4, Large White Cabbage Butterfly, eggs, caterpillar, and chrysalis. 
In tlie course of October Mr. Ralph Lowe forwarded, from Sleaford, 
Lincolnshire, a number of clusters of the small yellow silken cocoons 
of the Microgaster glomeratus , the Parasite Ichneumon Fly of which 
the maggots feed within the caterpillars of the Large Cabbage Butter¬ 
fly, and which were then to be found in unusually large numbers on 
some walls near Cabbage grounds in that neighbourhood. 
These minute, somewhat wasp-shaped, flies are one of our best 
checks on the increase of the Large Cabbage Butterfly. The female 
Ichneumon inserts a large number of eggs, sometimes upwards of 
sixty, in one caterpillar, where they hatch, and within which they feed, 
avoiding the consumption of the parts necessary to the life of their 
host, which may often be picked out from uninfested caterpillars by its 
larger size, consequent on the number of maggots within it. When 
these are full-fed (which appears to be usually at the time their live 
host should have turned to the chrysalis state) the Ichneumon maggots 
make their way out of it, and spin small yellow silken cases about the 
eighth of an inch long, which are commonly found in clusters, like 
masses of minute silkworm cocoons, near the body of the Cabbage 
caterpillar, which has died from exhaustion instead of turning to 
chrysalis. 
Ichneumon Flies (see Curtis’s ‘ Farm Insects ’) have been seen 
coming out in May from cocoons spun in the previous September, 
