TURNIP MUD-BEETLE, 93 
in the magnified figure. The general colour (when washed free of the 
clinging dirt, a very necessary operation with this kind of beetle) is 
rusty or rusty-red ; the wing-cases ochrey or greyish, with dark spots. 
The fore body is marked above (as figured) with various forked or 
wavy grooves, and the wing-cases are punctate-striate, with the char- 
acteristic peculiarity of the spaces between being raised in a clean 
smooth ridge. The earliest date at which I have received these 
beetles was, as near as may be, June 26th, but they had been watched 
at work on the leafage previously ; and I have had the beetles, as well 
as the grubs, sent at the beginning of November. 
But what we still need in order to be able to prevent recurrence of 
the attack is knowledge of where it is that it goes into the chrysalis or 
pupal state. From the few notes that we have of first observation of 
the pest, it might be supposed that it hybernated on the infested 
ground, and came from this to attack the adjacent crop in the following 
year. In 1889 Mr. John Milne, of Inverurie, who is a thoroughly 
trustworthy observer, wrote me that he had ‘‘ observed Turnip-fields 
attacked at the side next a former T'urnip-field here and there through- 
out this part of the country’’ [Inverurie, Aberdeenshire, Ep.] ‘‘ for 
over thirty years. It is most seen in crofts (small farms) where the 
lots are in narrow stripes; in some places I have seen the portion of a 
lot next the last year’s Turnip lot quite half-eaten.”—(J. R.) 
The Helophoride, the family of beetles to which this Mud-beetle 
belongs, are mentioned by Prof. Westwood as often flying ‘‘ about in 
the hot sunshine’’; so they could easily transport themselves on the 
wing to where there might be attraction; but still the fact of special 
infestation occurring on the specially adjoining new crop to where the 
old one suffered, appears to point to the creatures remaining present 
there, and hybernating either in beetle or chrysalis state. 
This attack does a good deal of mischief, as noted by Mr. Robert 
Turnbull, Inspector of Technical Education under the Aberdeen 
County Council, who wrote me in 1894 regarding the grub attacks :-— 
‘They eat the surfaces of the Turnips and leaf-stalks into holes, and 
also burrow into the leaf-stalks. During the past two years this mode 
of attack has been very common, and the farmers complain that rain 
gets into the holes thus made in the tubers, causing decay to set in.””— 
(Eee) 
For the above reason, and also because it appears very likely that 
a part at least of the unexplained failures in growth of the central 
leaves of the Turnip might be found if investigated to be due to pre- 
sence of this infestation, I have drawn attention to it again, although 
it has been already noticed in my Reports for 1889 and 1894. 
