386 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
the Border counties. Turnips might be sown early or very 
late, in either extreme there was no palliative, so long as 
drought prevailed; and plants, insufficient in force for the 
maintenance of the devouring myriads, kept up merely a 
feeble and struggling existence. It was only through the 
advent of showers long delayed, and a mild atmosphere, that 
the crops got established, and at length out-grew their per- 
sistent persecutors ; for not only did they swarm on the seed 
lobes, but continued to perforate the foliage and delay the 
growth, long after the plants were singled out; some even 
lingering in the fields till there were sizeable turnips. Near 
the sea-side the damage was not so great as further inland. 
My own Swedes did not require to be re-sown; but, as for 
the white turnips, it was by mere dint of persevering sowing 
that the ground got covered at all. Some parts of the fields, 
here, produce wild mustard, or “runch” (Sinapis arvensis). 
This was found to be a great preservative to the young 
turnip-plants, in allowing them to assume the rough leaf 
unbitten. The beetles took as readily to the mustard as to 
the turnip, it being their natural food; aud I noticed that 
when the Swedes were nearly forward for thinning, the 
mustard obtained the preference. Owing to this, although 
the insects in some places lay on the plants like gunpowder, 
after side-hoeing and thinning the blanks were very few. 
I have heard that in other places, where mustard is in the 
soil, this also happened; so that it is not an unmitigated 
evil; being, in such seasons as the present, equivalent to 
thick sowing, in fields not liable to this weed. 
| had previously remarked that the cruciferous wild plants 
(Arabis and Cardamine) on the dry banks were unwontedly 
frittered away during the present dry spring; but had no 
conception that such assemblages would spring, as it were, 
out of the dust so suddenly. If these feeding-grounds did 
not furnish all, they, at least, augmented the bands that 
gathered in on every side to invade the cultivated lands. It 
is wonderful, after all, that such a favourable crop has been 
realised. The disastrous outset in this district was, with the 
exception of the partial loss of the Swedes, in some measure 
repaired ; and it was only some stubborn clayey fields that 
continued bare fallow, in spite of the master’s skill. 
Mr. Langlands has kindly furnished a notice of what 
