16 CABBAGE. 
sometimes they had larger lumps of galls grown together, so as to make 
compound globular swellings up to about half an inch by one inch in 
diameter, often with passages gnawed by the maggots from one con- 
fluent gall to the other, so that the inside was a brown, discoloured, 
roughly eaten-out chamber, more or less advanced towards decay. 
This rough chamber might be found encircling very nearly the whole 
of the Cabbage-stem a little below ground-level, and many of the 
plants were so much smaller for a short length above the galls as to 
appear as if the growth had been appreciably stunted by the gall- 
presence. 
The maggots were of various ages, and in some few instances had 
not yet cleared away much of the inside of the smaller galls, which 
were still only a little decayed and discoloured within. 
In one instance where there was a large mass of confluent galls, 
about four or five grown together, I found the eaten-away hollowed 
chamber extending nearly round the stem, without any maggots 
present excepting at one extremity, where a fairly sound gall remained 
with only a hole for passage eaten into it; and in this gall I found four 
maggots, apparently the previous tenants of these other galls. 
The Cabbage-plants averaged about eight to ten inches in length, 
and their advanced size, and also the size of the galls, made remedial 
measures difficult, if not impossible. The maggot gnawings went 
down to (or well into) the surface of the root, so as entirely to destroy 
the outer part, in some cases to a depth ruinous to the plant, unless 
subsequent circumstances might cause a good development of roots 
above the injured part. If the galls had been cut or scraped away, 
this, at the size to which they were grown, would have made such 
large wounds that it would have been very far from certain that they 
would heal; and if not cut off they made a centre for spread of decay 
from the gnawed tissue and the maggot-dirt in the galls. 
The samples were a portion of two hundred score of plants, and 
on enquiry the sender told me that of these some were more, some 
less, infested than the specimens put in my hands; but that all except 
about one in nineteen or twenty were galled. This was the very worst 
instance of Cabbage-root gall attack that I have ever seen, and I 
strongly advised return of the plants, which were considered to be 
practically useless, and such return was intended to be made. 
Other communication sent gave nothing new; only showed that 
the weevil grubs were in good health, and some of them remarkably 
well-grown specimens at the beginning of April. 
If this attack was usually seriously hurtful it would be worth while 
to draw attention to the absolute certainty of perpetuating it by 
growing Cabbage year after year on the same ground ; but as the case 
stands perhaps it does not very much matter, 
