I found this mixture act well on Cabbage green fly, and if you should try it I shall be very much obliged for any observation. The great point is to mix the ingredients at boiling heat. I would try whether the strength noted was safe for any special plant. I rather think it is for cabbage, but certainly not for young leafage of roses. I shall be very glad if I can be of any help in the matter.
(a) 1, Turnip moth; 2, caterpillar.
(b) 1, Heart-and-dart moth; 2, caterpillar; 3, chrysalis in earth-cell.
FIG. 1.—SURFACE CATERPILLARS: OF THE TURNIP OR DART MOTH, AGROTIS SEGETUM, OCHSENHEIMER, AND OF THE HEART-AND-DART MOTH,
AGROTIS EXCLAMATIONIS, LINN.
Torrington House, St. Albans,
January 26, 1888.
Many thanks for your note received this morning. I shall hope to add some of it to my Turnip Caterpillars paper, which is not yet gone to press. Thank you for the offer of the specimens, but I do not quite see my way to showing live ones yet. My lecture [at the London Farmers’ Club] is a terribly anxious prospect to myself, but I can but do my best, and I am endeavouring with the utmost care to form something that may be acceptable, but I am sure you will believe me that to address such a skilled audience is rather anxious work. I should much like to lay before the members of the Club some ideas for their consideration as to how some reasonable amount of plain serviceable information might be got abroad. I do not believe in all this lecturing, examining and talking of classification. To my thinking it is beginning at the wrong end, and that the learners need first to make sure of their facts in the field and classify them when they have got them, if they do it at all.
Female, head of male, and caterpillar.
FIG. 2.—WOOD LEOPARD MOTH, ZEUZERA ÆSCULI, LINN.