TURNIP-FLY. 97 



dred otlier kinds of all sorts and sizes, set out on their 

 foraging excursions. The air is filled with them : if you 

 ride outside a coach, they are eternally knocking against 

 your physiognomy : if you work in your garden, you hear 

 them rattling, like a gentle shower of rain, on the lights of 

 your cucumber-frame: no earthly power can keep these 

 little miscreants from roving on a bright summer day. 

 Then comes another fact: all insects are gifted with a 

 wonderful sense of smell vast power in the olfactories : it 

 may be presumed that the odoriferous particles borne on 

 the wings of Zephyr from a field of delicately young tur- 

 nips, their very favourite food, would be most attractive to 

 them ; and such is the case : the fine weather tempts them 

 to leave the preserve, the scent of the turnips lures them to 

 the fields, leads them by the nose, and you may see them 

 descending during the hours of sunshine, in a gentle, con- 

 tinuous and disastrous shower. The work of destruction 

 is brief, but complete ; like locusts they clear the ground 

 as they proceed ; beginning on the lee-side of a field they 

 march forward, making destruction sure. I have seen 

 three and four on a single seedling; each with his head bu- 

 ried in the hole he has just begun to gnaw. If the spring 

 has been fine and the weather at this period is dry, there 

 is no hope for the crop : its fate is sealed : if, on the con- 

 trary, the weather is wet, there is every chance of the 

 crop being saved. The marauders cannot bear the wet, 

 and the plants are too small to afford them shelter beneath 

 the leaves, so they creep under ground, hiding beneath 

 little lumps of earth, and there remain till all is dry again: 

 meanwhile the turnip grows apace, sends out its rough 

 leaves, gains strength and bulk hour after hour, and soon 

 supplies more food than the beetles can consume ; so that 



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