342 MR. bold's notes, etc. 



appetite, for I noted them feeding and breeding upon many 

 different plants.* Cabbages, pease, beans, kidney beans, dahlias, 

 nasturtiums, poppies, and many others suiting them equally well 

 for food. A green species might occasionally be seen in the 

 ranks, but were very few in numbers, certainly not more than 

 one in a thousand of the others. This {Aphis Brassica) com- 

 mitted sad havoc upon our turnip crop, destroying whole fields, 

 even on the valuable land of the Tyne-side and elsewhere. 

 Wheat and oats were infested to a great extent by a reddish- 

 brown species, which were in some places so numerous that they 

 had to be shaken off before the sheaves could be bound up. A 

 field of oats that I passed through had them clustering on every 

 spikelet, giving to the grain the appearance of having been 

 saturated by " bloody rain." 



In Dipterous insects, the same remark before made of Lepl- 

 doptera will hold good, for the large and more conspicuous 

 species were not in their usual numbers ; yet house-flies were 

 numerous, and the various species of Chieronomys were abundant, 

 weaving their mazy dance in every sheltered lane. Probably the 

 larvae of the latter are aquatic, and pass the winter in that state ; 

 if so, their numbers are easily accounted for. It is not so easy 

 to account for the abundance of the former. 



From the foregoing jottings, hasty and imperfect as they are, 

 I think there can be no doubt but that extreme wet, followed 

 (as in this instance) by severe cold, is exceedingly prejudicial to 

 insect life. However, at some future time, I hope to have an 

 opportunity of comparing the effects of each agent separately? 

 as I fancy that extreme wet, unaccompanied by a very low 

 degree of temperature, or vice versa, will give more decided and 

 characteristic results, 



THOMAS JOHN BOLD. 



* Mr. Hardy, L.C., remarks that a "list of no less than eighty-two plants 

 has been drawn up, on which it {Aphis Rumicis) has been detected feeding ; 

 and the number could be easily augmented." 



