NIGGER. 99 



tenfold the labour of the few women required to weed : 

 the weeds themselves would be the only fuel required, and 

 five shillings' worth of sulphur would be enough for a good 

 sized farm. Another fact, which to me is very obvious, 

 although most farmers deny it, is, that swedes are much 

 less injured by the fly than any other variety of turnip 

 whatsoever, so that I would recommend the cultivation of 

 this plant where practicable in preference to any other. 

 One more partial remedy is worthy of notice : the turnip- 

 beetle has a great antipathy to the taste of salt, and if the 

 leaves are watered with a weak solution of salt in water I 

 have found them quite untouched. Great benefit also fol- 

 lows the steeping of the seed in weak brine ; this I once 

 proposed in the belief that the eggs of the parent beetle 

 were laid on the seed, an error I immediately afterwards 

 detected and publicly renounced : the egg I found laid on 

 the leaf itself. 



A second, but still more dreaded plague of the turnip 

 crop is the NIGGER : happily, however, its visits are few 

 and far between. This year [1835] all our turnips are 

 infested with these niggers. They are the caterpillars 

 of a fly that ought really to be called the turnip-fly, a 

 name which we have seen is universally given to the tur- 

 nip-beetle. About the middle of July these real turnip- 

 flies were showered down on us as it were from the clouds; 

 they fell thicker than rain-drops, and hovered about the 

 turnips in such myriads that whole fields were coloured 

 with a rainbowy tinge when the hot sun shone on their 

 filmy wings. I will give an entomological description of 

 one of these flies : the head and antenna? are coal-black ; 

 the thorax is yellow before and on the top, but coal-black 

 on the sides and behind ; the body is yellow ; the wings 



H2 



