Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/225

Rh "study" must be a veritable "Scotland Yard" for insect depredators. Here an account is kept of all previous convictions, and the names, habits, and life-histories of all these agricultural criminals are accurately recorded and regularly published, while the most speedy and convenient methods for their destruction are studied and advised. We fear, however, that these annual reports are not sufficiently procured by our agriculturists, fruit-growers, and foresters, to whom they should prove indispensable; while all who take an interest in a garden—"and who loves a garden loves a greenhouse too"—will find aid in its pages to resist the attacks of many enemies. We sometimes scarcely estimate the size of these insect hordes which ravage our crops. One of Miss Ormerod's correspondents, a head-schoolmaster, relates that during the late season, when the larvæ of White Cabbage Butterflies made dreadful havoc among the cabbages and similar plants, he put two boys at a time during their dinner-hour, in his small garden of about a quarter of an acre, with a net to catch these butterflies, of which in seven days they caught and killed no fewer than 834. Again, from two hundred and forty plants the boys gathered more than 5000 caterpillars.

Insects alone do not curtail Miss Ormerod's work, and in this issue we have a most interesting account of the Snail-Slug (Testacella haliotidea), an animal which is labelled (Beneficial) "ridding us of small ground vermin; they are wholly carnivorous, and prey chiefly on Earthworms, but also on Slugs and Snails, and even on each other."