INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 141 



Our peas, beans, ^carrots, parsnips, turnips, and potatoes are attacked in 

 the garden by the same enemies that injure them in the fields^ ; I shall 

 therefore dismiss them without further notice, and point out those which 

 infest another of our most esteemed kinds of pulse, kidney beans. These 

 are principally Aphides, which in dry seasons are extremely injurious to 

 them. The fluid which they secrete, falling upon the leaves, causes them 

 to turn black as if sprinkled with soot; and the nutriment being subtract- 

 ed from the pods by their constant suction, they are prevented from com- 

 ing to their proper size or perfection. The beans also which they contain 

 are sometimes devoured by the caterpillar of a small moth.^ — Onions, 

 which add a relish to the poor man's crusts and cheese, and form so mate- 

 rial an ingredient in the most savory dishes of the rich, are also the favorite 

 food of the maggot of a fly, that often does considerable damage to the 

 crop. — From this maggot (for a supply of onions containing which I have 

 to thank my friend Mr. Campbell, surgeon, of Hedon near Hull, where it 

 is very injurious, particularly in light soils,) I have succeeded in breeding 

 the fly, which proves of that tribe of the Linnean genus Musca, now 

 called Anihomyia. Being apparently undescribed, and new to my valued 

 correspondent Count Hoffmansegg to whom I sent it, I call it ^. Cepa- 

 rutn. — The diuretic asparagus, towards the close of the season, is some- 

 times rendered unpalateable by the numerous eggs of the asparagus beetle 

 (^Crioceris Asparagi), and its larvae feed upon the foliage after the heads 

 branch out. — Cucumbers with us enjoy an immunity from insect assailants ; 

 but in America they are deprived of this privilege, an unascertained 

 species, called there the cucumber-fly doing them great injury.^ — The 

 plants of spinach are sometimes eaten bare by the blackish-brown cater- 

 pillars of the lovely little moth Glyphypteryx ttaseUa^ — Horse-radish (as 

 well as the cabbage tribe) is attacked by the larvse of another moth, 

 Mesographe forficalis.^ — And to name no more, mushrooms, which are 

 frequently cultivated and much in request, often swarm with the maggots 

 of various Diptera and Coleoptera. 



The insects just enumerated are partial in their attacks, confining them- 

 selves to one or two kinds of our pulse or other vegetables. But there 

 are others that devour more indiscriminately the produce of our gardens ; 

 and of these in certain seasons and countries we have no greater and 

 more universal enemy than the caterpillar of a moth called by entomolo- 



' On examining some young garden peas and beans about four inches high, I observed 

 the margins of the leaves to be gnawed into deep scollops by a little weevil (Silona lineata), 

 of which I found from two to eight on each pea and bean, and many in the act of eating. 

 Not only were the larger leaves of every plant thus eroded, but in many cases the terminal 

 young shoots and leaves were apparently irreparably injured. I have often noticed this 

 and another of the short-snouted Curculios (S. tibialis) in great abundance in pea and bean 

 fields, but was not aware till now that either of ihem was injurious to these plants. Proba- 

 bly both are so, but whether the crop is materially afiected by them must be left to further 

 inquiry. Garden beans still more than the field kinds, Mr. Curtis informs us, greatly suf- 

 fered in 1841, from the holes which humUe-bees (Bombus terrestris and lucorum) tna.de in. 

 the blossoms (as they usually do) to get out the honey contained in the nectary, which ope- 

 ration injuring the pods in their earliest state, four-fifths of them were destroyed, and pro- 

 duced no beans. (Curtis in Gardener's Chrun. 1841, p. 485.) When at Shrewsbury in Au- 

 gust 1839, I found almost every pod of the garden peas brought to market, inhabited by a 

 single yellowish-white lepidopierous larva, three or four lines long, which had eaten more 

 or less of each pea, but which, though several assumed the pupa state and entered the earth 

 in the box in which they vjqiq placed, never became perfect moths. 



* Reaum. ii. 479. 3 Barton in Fhilos. Magaz. ix. 62. 



* Kollar's Ins. inj. to Gardeners, &c. p. 157. * Ibid. p. 155. 



