66 
GOOSEBERRIES. 
discharge the syringe into the tub once,—then syringe once, and in 
this way he considers the application a safe insecticide. 
Mr. Taylor, writing from Longleat, observes, that besides the 
common Gooseberry caterpillar, with which he is perfectly familiar, 
there is a smaller kind which appears a month or six weeks later. 
This lays its eggs, and the caterpillars also begin to feed at the edges 
of the leaves; commonly only about three are hatched on one leaf. 
Nevertheless, in some seasons they are as numerous as the common 
kind, which lays half a hundred or more on one leaf. 
(The specimen of the small green Sawfly caterpillar forwarded 
corresponded with the description and figure of the rare kind, 
Nematus consobrina. —Ed.) 
Mr. Taylor mentions that the chrysalis of this variety does not 
winter in the ground, unless it is just under the surface close to a 
wall or other dry place ; it prefers the nail-lioles in a wall or holes in 
wood, but it sometimes remains on the hush itself. Fir-tree oil, at 
the rate of half a pint to three gallons of soft water, applied in a fine 
spray all over the bushes, is the remedy used, but found to be an 
expensive one, as it has to be applied each time of appearance of the 
caterpillars, whilst they are yet small, and taking the two varieties 
together there are three or four broods during the summer. Shifting 
the bushes to new ground, some distance from their previous position, 
will give freedom from the caterpillars for a season. 
The importance of bringing about a separation, in whatever way 
may be most practicable, between the Gooseberry bushes and infested 
ground cannot be too strongly impressed. Sometimes the Gooseberry 
bushes can be moved from the earth ; but commonly it answers best 
to remove the surface earth from beneath the Gooseberry bushes. In 
either case the work should be thoroughly done, and a marked 
instance of failure from only half completing the work occurred in the 
past season, near Isleworth. 
In the course of the autumn of 1881 the surface soil was duly 
removed from under the rows of bushes in a portion of a Gooseberry 
ground, but I observed that it was not taken away. The soil lay for 
months in rows between the rows of Gooseberry bushes, and in due 
time the attack, which was plainly to be expected, came, and the 
leafage was fairly devastated by caterpillar. 
It is much to be wished that the superintendents on Gooseberry 
farms should themselves examine the state of the soil for two or three 
inches deep (or rather deeper in light soils), under a bush or two that 
has been attacked, and when they have found the brown caterpillar 
cases (which may be known by their likeness to the figure), and look 
like small brown earth pellets, just open a few and show the greenish 
caterpillar within to their workers. If the fact could by any means 
