TURNIP-FLY. 91 



There will perhaps be some who ask the use of all this : 

 who want to know why the blights are to be brought out 

 of their hiding-places and hauled over and written into no- 

 tice : who will tell you that the oaks and the quicksets 

 have lived on through all their trouble, and despite the at- 

 tacks of all their enemies : the teetotallers, too, will doubt- 

 less turn up their noses and gravely assert that if all the 

 hops and all the apples were destroyed by vermin it would 

 be a good job, because it would stop the supplies of beer 

 and cider : others may contend that the evil done is ac- 

 companied by good : for example, that the ravages of the 

 hop-fly keep up the price of the hop, so as to afford a tole- 

 rable profit to the grower ; whereas, were there to be no 

 fly, the crop would be larger than the consumption, and 

 the price consequently not a remunerating one. By the 

 way, I well recollect, that after the immense crop of 

 1826, the price did not repay the grower his rent, taxes 

 and labour : and the farmers, a set of men, I am sorry to 

 say it, with less forethought generally than any other class 

 of tradesmen, most iinprovidently went to work and were 

 silly enough to grub up their hop-yards and sow wheat. 

 This took place in several instances in the district between 

 Farnham and Alton, and at the same time both in Kent 

 and Herefordshire ; and afterwards, when the price reco- 

 vered, some of the finest pasture land in the world was 

 ploughed up to make hop-yards, which have not yet paid 

 even the tithe. There is, however, a blight whose ravages 

 are without any proportionate good, or any good at all that 

 I am aware of : a thief that robs our sheep and our cows 

 of their winter food, and often compels their owners to 

 starve them to skin and bone, thereby causing murrain 

 and all manner of disease to the kiue, empty pockets to 



