INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 105 



bulb shoots, called fingers and toes, be occasioned by insects, is not cer- 

 tainly known.* Another root, the Beet, which has within the last twenty 

 years been almost as extensively cultivated in France for the manufacture 

 of sugar as turnips with us, is much injured by a small beetle, a new 

 species of Cryploj}hagiis described by M. Macquart (C Bette), which 

 devours the plants as soon as they appear above ground.''* 



We have wandered long enough about the fields to observe the progress 

 of insect devastation : let us now 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 Mtclioi-gardcn, 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, 

 radis/ies, are devoured by the maggot of a fly (Antkomt/ia liadicuvi), assisted 

 by those of a very small beetle (^Latridius j)oi-catus'^), and our lettuces by 

 the caterpillars of several species of moth ; one of which is the beautiful 

 tiger-moth (^Euprep'ia Cajci), another the pot-herb moth ( Alamestra ole- 

 racca), 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 

 tor the table, their beauty and delicacy are often marred by the troublesome 

 earwig, which, insinuating itself into them, defiles them with its excrements ; 

 while the seed is often nearly wholly destroyed (as was the case in Suffolk 

 in 1836 and the three following years) by the grubs of a tly (y^/HiAo?H_y/« 

 LactuccE Bouche) which live in the involucre, and teed on the seeds and 

 receptacle.^ What more acceptable vegetable in the spring than brocoli ? 

 Yet how dreadfully is its foliage often ravaged m tiie autumn by numerous 

 hordes of the cabbage-luittertly ; 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, and a species of field-bug {Fentatoma 

 ornata), which pierces the leaves like a sieve®, in some countries they are 

 infested by the caterpillar of a most destructive moth (Mamcstra Brassicce), 

 to which I have before alluded ; which, not content with the leaves, pene- 

 trates into the very heart of the plant.' — One of the most delicate and 



^ Spence's Observations on ilie Disease in Turnips called Fingers and Toes, Hull, 

 1812, 8vo. 



2 Ann. Sc. Nat. xxiii. 94. quoted by Westwood, 3Iod. Class, of Ins. i. 148. 



3 Kyber in Geruiar's 3Iag. der Entom. i. 1. 



4 Keaum. ii. 471. 



^ Curtis in Gardener's Chronicle, 1841, p. 303. 



6 KoUar on Ins. iuj. to Gardeners, &c. p. 148. 



7 De Geer, ii. 440. In the summer of 182(1, when at Brussels, I observed that de- 

 licious vegetable of the cabbage tribe so largely cultivated there under the name of 

 Jets de ctioux, and which in England we call Brussels sprouts, to be materially in- 

 jured in tiie later stages of its growth by the attacks of the turnip-flea, and other 

 little beetles of the same genus {Haltica), which were so numerous and so universally 

 prevalent, that I scarcely ever examined a full-grown plant from which a vast num- 

 ber niiglit not have been collected. Some plants were almost black with them, the 

 species most abundant being of a dark copper tinge. They had not merely eroded 

 the cuticle in various parts, so as to give tiie leaves a brown blistered appearance, 

 but had also eaten thera into large holes, at the margin of which I often saw them 

 in the act of gnawing ; and the stunted and unhealthy appearance of the plants 



