Abstract
Miss ORMEROD and her assistants are to be congratulated on this very excellent Report, which is far more bulky than its predecessors, and correspondingly useful and interesting, and well illustrated. At the outset a very significant fact is mentioned. The season of 1880 was remarkably suitable for vegetation, and the attacks of insects consequently less severe; a high condition of vitality enabled the plants to more successfully cope with their insect enemies. The most injurious species for the year was the well-known larva of Tipula (daddy-long-legs), which not only attacked its more usual food, the roots of grasses, but proved itself extremely injurious to peas, so that in one field of twenty acres the prospective value in March was reduced to a realised value of only about one half in June; other crops were also attacked. Stimulating remedies, such as guano, salt, ammoniacal liquor, &c., had a good effect, but the grubs appeared to be remarkably indifferent to ordinary poisonous solutions. An experiment at the Kew Observatory as to the amount of cold they can endure showed that some survived 42° of frost. Another very injurious species was Tephritis onopordinis (the celery-fly); a dressing of gas-lime, unslaked lime, and soot had a good effect. The singularly misnamed Psila rosœ (the carrot fly) was also obnoxious; sowing the seeds in a mixture of leaf-mould, ashes, &c., proved of excellent service in this case. Sitones lineatus was very injurious to peas. We think Miss Ormerod acts injudiciously in calling this insect the “pea-weevil.” Its larva is certainly very much given to attacking peas and many other plants, by eating the young shoots, but the true pea-weevil is Bruchus pisi, which destroys the peas themselves by feeding inside them. For the gooseberry saw-fly nothing proved so effectual as digging out the earth round the bushes when the larvæ and pupæ are underground, the removed portion being taken away and burnt; a suggestion that if pieces of woollen cloth be placed on the bushes the parent fly will deposit her eggs thereon seems far-fetched. Miss Ormerod has great faith in the efficacy of paraffine. In future it is proposed to extend the Report to insects not hitherto specially mentioned as desirable for observation, such as the larch-aphis and pine saw-fly. We are glad to note that the authoress has a Manual of Economic Entomology in the press.
Notes of Observations of Injurious Insects.
Report, 1880. By Eleanor A. Ormerod. 8vo. pp. 1–48. (London: W. Swan Sonnenschein and Allen. Edinburgh: J. Menzies, 1881.)
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Notes of Observations of Injurious Insects . Nature 23, 432 (1881). https://doi.org/10.1038/023432a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/023432a0