With my next number (all being well) I propose to commence a “Second Series”—altering my plan a little, so as to have a special section in which I could place any good short notes of information sent me, thus utilising what may come to hand, but without being encumbered by perpetual repetition, year after year, of life history and figures, of well known, or what should be well known, attacks.
June 26, 1899.
It is too good of you to give me the two copies of this valuable pamphlet, “Some Insects Injurious to Stored Grain,” and I thank you very much. But I did not beg for more of your publications, and tried to get them via Messrs. Wesley, because you are so good to me, in constantly presenting information quite invaluable to me, that, as it is, I do not know how to reciprocate the kindness. We have nothing like your publications to fall back on here, and when a very heavy case is brought to me I naturally benefit by your books.
I have lately been called in about a cargo of flour of 46,200 seven-stone bags, every bag (so far as examined) infested by Calandra (= Sitophilus) granaria (Granary weevil, fig. [68]), and the Mediterranean Flour or Mill moth (fig. [41]), and it was for the importers that I was trying to procure a copy, the other for my own lending. I am truly obliged to you.
My Index is not ready yet. I thought I could improve it, and strained my eyes so badly that I caused delay without much good.
Now I am trying to work up Piophila casei (Cheese and Bacon fly, fig. [12]) as a cheese pest. How curious it is that it should not trouble cured meats with us, as with you—nor cheese with you as with us.
The Shell-slug, Testacella haliotidea (fig. [44]), seems to me to deserve a little notice, as (by its carnivorous habit) ridding us of various under- and above-ground troubles (slugs especially), and I have been gathering a few notes about the creature for some years. Another (I believe) unusual presence lately sent me was a specimen of the Ground Planarian, Bipalium kewense, found eating plants “like a slug.” I did not know the worm (so to call it) at all, but the name was given at S. Kensington. When it arrived it looked only like a very narrow slimy strip about three inches long—but I thought from its reported habitat possibly some slightly warm water would revive it, and immediately it roused up and swelled to a narrow cylindrical shape, and leaving the moss on which it lay made such fair speed (by adhesion of the lower surface) up the side of the bowl, bearing an unpleasant looking bilobed head before it, that I restored it to its box as soon as might be.
1, Snail-slug, in motion; 2, contracted; 3, head, with tentacles, magnified; 4, shell, upper and under side, slightly magnified; 5, shell, much magnified; 6, egg (4 and 6 from Plate v. of Jeffrey’s British Conchology, vol. i.; the other figures from specimens taken at St. Albans).
FIG. 44.—SNAIL-SLUG, TESTACELLA HALIOTIDEA, DRAPARNAUD.
