NOXIOUS INSECTS. 147 



summer in farm kitchens, on the bacon-racks, and 

 about the mantel-pieces, and on the ceilings. 



The insect that infests turnips, and many crops in 

 the garden, (destroying often whole fields, while in 

 their seedling leaves,) is an animal that wants to be 

 better known. The country people here call it the 

 turnip fly and black dolphin ; but I know it to be one 

 of the coleoptera, the " chrysomela oleracea, saltatoria, 

 femoribus posticis crassissimis* ," (The cabbage chry- 

 somela, moving by a leap, with very thick hind-legs.) 

 In very hot summers they abound to an amazing 

 degree, and, as you walk in a field, or in a garden, 

 make a pattering like rain, by jumping on the leaves 

 of the turnips or cabbages. 



There is an oestrus, known in these parts to every 

 ploughboy, which, because it is omitted by Linnseus, 



* This is most probably the haltica nemorum, called by the 

 farmers the Fly and Black Jack, so well described by Messrs. 

 Kirby and Spence, in their admirable chapters on indirect 

 injuries. It attacks and devours the first cotyledon leaves, as 

 soon as they are unfolded ; so that, on account of their ravages, 

 the land is often obliged to be resown, and with no better 

 success. By these entomologists it is stated, on the authority 

 of an eminent agriculturist, that, from this cause alone, the 

 loss sustained in the turnip crops in Devonshire, in 1786, was 

 not less than =100,000. Great damage is also sometimes done 

 by the little curculio contractus, which, in the same manner, 

 pierces a hole in the cuticle. When the plant is more advanced, 

 and out of danger from these pigmy foes, the black larva of a saw- 

 fly takes their place, and occasionally does no little mischief, 

 whole districts being sometimes stripped by them, and, in 

 1783, many thousand acres were, on this account, ploughed up. 

 The caterpillar of papilio brassica is sometimes found in great 

 numbers, and the wire- worm also does occasionally great da- 

 mage, both to turnips and other vegetable and flower roots. Mr. 

 Kirby mentions a field in which one- fourth was destroyed, and 

 which the owner calculated at 100. One year, the same per- 

 son sowed a field three times with turnips, which were twice 

 wholly, and the third time a great part, cut off by this insect. 

 W. J. 



L 2 



