INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 189 



return home to visit the domains of Flora and Pomona, 

 that we may see whether their subjects are exposed to 

 equal maltreatment. If we begin with the kitchen-garden, 

 we shall find that its various productions, ministering so 

 materially to our daily comfort and enjoyment, almost 

 all suffer more or less from the attack of the animals we 

 are considering. — Thus, the earliest of our table dainties, 

 radishes, are devoured by the maggot of a fly [AntJiomyia 

 Radicum), and our lettuces by the caterpillars of several 

 species of moth ; one of which is the beautiful tiger-moth 

 [Euivepia Caja), another the pot-herb-moth {Mamestra 

 oleracea), a third anonymous, described by Reaumur as 

 beginning at the root, eating itself a mansion in the stem, 

 and so destroying the plant before it cabbages ». And 

 when they are come to their perfection and appear fit 

 for the table, their beauty and delicacy are often marred 

 by the troublesome earwig, which, insinuating itself into 

 them, defiles them with its excrements. — What more 

 acceptable vegetable in the spring than brocoli ? Yet 

 how dreadfully is its foliage often ravaged in the autumn 

 by numerous hordes of the cabbage-butterfly ! so that, 

 in an extensive garden, you will sometimes see nothing 

 left of the leaves except the veins and stalks. — What 

 more useful, again, than the cabbage ? Besides the same 

 insect, which injures them in a similar way, in some 

 countries they are infested by the caterpillar of a most 

 destructive moth [Mamestra Brassicce), to which indeed 

 I have before alluded^ ; which, not content with the 

 leaves, penetrates into the very heart of the plant '^. — 



" Reaum. ii. 4/1. '' See above, p. 29. 



" De Geer, ii. 440. In the summer of 182G when at Brussels, I 

 observed that delicious vegetable of the cabbage tribe so largely cul- 

 tivated there under the name ofJets de choux, and which in England 



