CABBAGE AND TURNIP ROOT-GALL WEEVILS. ils 
It is an infestation, however, which is remarkably little liable to be 
checked by natural causes. The hard blackish weevil beetles, only 
about the eighth of an inch in length, of the shape figured magnified 
at 7, p. 15, are hardly observable as a matter of field infestation. 
The maggots produced from the eggs laid by the female beetles are at 
first hardly perceptible in the galls which their presence causes. They 
lie there as thick-made whitish or yellowish and legless grubs, with 
the head furnished with strong ochre-coloured or chestnut jaws, armed 
with two well-defined teeth at the extremity, with a third, which is 
sometimes much smaller, and sometimes little more than a tubercle on 
the inner side,* and can feed, well protected in the thick fleshy gall- 
growth, unless dragged out by insectivorous birds, until the time 
comes for them to leave the gall and turn to the chrysalis-state in 
the earth. 
Here again their customs of life are a great protection to them. 
In my own investigations of the habits of the grubs I have found that 
on being disturbed, even if not apparently quite full-grown, they 
almost invariably buried themselves in the earth and constructed their 
earth-cases. These cases (where I was able to watch the process) were 
built up by the maggot holding some portion of its surroundings with 
the tail-end, and then adding material until it formed for itself an 
obtusely oval case, lying in the earth chamber from which the material 
had been taken. If the earth-case is broken before the maggot has 
turned to pupa, it will thoroughly repair it, or in winter I have found 
that they will bear being frozen stiff, and on being thawed will at once 
bury themselves and begin constructing or reconstructing their cases. 
The time occupied from disappearance of the maggot to appearance 
of the beetle, in the instances of Turnip and Cabbage infestation which 
I watched in summer, was never less than about fifty-four days, and 
never more than two months. The infestation is to be found at the 
roots of many kinds of the Cabbage tribe, as, for instance, Rape, 
Common and Swede Turnips, Cauliflower, and Hearted and Red 
Pickling Cabbage, &c., and may be present during all the warmer 
part of the year in its different stages, and even during winter 
maggots are to be found in the galls. 
It is often to be found together with the fungoid disease variously 
known commonly as Club in Cabbage, and as Anbury or Finger-and- 
Toe in Turnips; but the two attacks may be distinguished by the 
root-galls being mere lumps, single or several grown together, and 
smooth and healthy looking outside, and inside either solid or (as 
attack progresses) more or less hollowed out until the maggot’s work is 
* See figs. of jaws in paper on Turnip and Cabbage-gall Weevil, in the ‘Ento 
mologist,’ vol. x., by E. A, Ormerod, 
