378 RAVAGES OF IXSECTS. 



attacks coleworts and cabbage ; and may sometimes be 

 found there along with another, not uncommon, but seldom 

 very destructive, called by collectors the burnished brass 

 (Plusia chrysitis), which differs little from the caterpillar of 

 the y moth, except in being of a brighter green. Another, 

 called the old gentlewoman (^Mamestra hrassicce, Treitsche), 

 is so destructive to cabbages in Germany, that the gardeners 

 gather whole basketsful and bury them ; but as Eosel re- 

 marks, they might as well endeavour to kill a crab by 

 covering it with sea-water, for it is natural to them to 

 burrow under ground when they change iiito chrysalides.* 

 We have seen this caterpillar, as well as that of the brown- 

 ej^e (^Mamestra oleracea), do considerable damage in Wilt- 

 shire, but nothing to what is reported of it in Germany. 



The leaves of cabbages, cauliflower, brocoli, coleworts, 

 and turnips, are frequently dcA^oured to a more considerable 

 extent by the sub-gregarious caterpillars of the white butter- 

 flies {Pontia hrassicoB, F. napi, &c.). From the great multi- 

 plicity of the butterflies, indeed, and from their being two 

 broods in the year, we have reason to wonder that their 

 i-avages are not more extensive. -But we have remarked 

 that they seem more partial to wild than cultivated plants ; 

 for we have seen, near Islington, the oleraceous weeds, such 

 as rape (Bmssica iiapus), overrun with them in the very same 

 fields with cultivated cabbages, which were not touched 

 (J. E.) ; so that the caterpillars are not always so injurious 

 as we might at first suppose, since in this case they tend to 

 keep down the weeds, while the birds and the ichneumon- 

 flies keep them in check by making pre}^ of them. 



The gi-egarious caterpillars of an allied species, called the 

 black-veined white butterfl}^ (Pien's Crafcegi, Stephens), is in 

 some seasons and districts no less destructive to orchards and 

 hawthorn hedges than the preceding ones are to the kitchen- 

 garden. Salisbur}^ who wi'ote at Chelsea in 1815, says it 

 " commits great destruction every spring, and not only to 

 the apple-trees, but other kinds of fruits. "f Mr. Stephens, 

 writing in 1827, says, "In June 1810, I saw it in plenty 



*■ Kosel, Inseckten, i, iv. 170. f Hints on Orchards, p. 56. 



