92 TURNIP-FLY. 



themselves, and a host of accompanying evils ; and this thief 

 is a little, glossy, tiny, skipping, hopping, meny-andrew 

 kind of a beetle, in common parlance known hy a name 

 the very mention of which elongates a farmer's counte- 

 nance at least an inch and a half the TURNIP-FLY. 



The turnip-fly is not always of one kind, hut the diffe- 

 rence hetween them is not important, they only alter in 

 their colour, their shape is always alike : the most com- 

 mon is coloured hottle-green ; hut in some fields all are 

 hlack, with a whitish line or stripe from stem to stern on 

 each side down the hack;* they are so active, that the only 

 way I could ever obtain them in the newly-sown fields was 

 hy sweeping the surface with a gauze net on an iron hoop 

 at the end of a strongish stick ; they jump like fleas di- 

 rectly they see you. These beetles begin their attack on 

 the turnip directly it is up, devouring the two cotyledons 

 and the little heart, and sometimes, in a few days leaving 

 the field as brown as the day it was sowed.f 



* The striped beetle, Altica nemorum, is properly the turnip-fly : the green 

 one is A. Brassicae. E. N. 



f To Mr. Le Keux is due the credit of discovering (or at any rate of pub- 

 lishing an account of) the economy of the turnip-beetle. " Having witnessed 

 the destructive effects of the turnip-fly in the year 1830, whilst lodging at a 

 farm-house in Devonshire, I was led to observe its habits, and to try many ex- 

 periments, in the hope of being able to find some means of guarding against 

 its attacks. My first observations were made upon a field of about eight acres, 

 forming the apex of a hill, which was sown with turnips. When the young 

 plants were just rising above the ground, the wind was in the south-east, and 

 continued to blow from that point for more than a week, carrying in its course 

 the scent of the turnips over the fields lying to the north-west, and the turnips 

 on the north-west side of the field were so destroyed by the fly that nearly an 

 acre was quite bare, whilst the south-east side was not attacked in any percep- 

 tible degree until after the plants had attained to such a size as not to be much 

 injured by their depredations. This circumstance led me to conclude that the 

 fly had been attracted by the scent, which subsequent observations have con- 

 firmed. When I became familiar with the form and character of the insect, I 



