100 NIGGER. 



are clear and very shining, and tinged with yellow, and 

 the upper ones have a dash of coal-hlack along the upper 

 margin, which reaches three quarters of the way from the 

 thorax to the tip of the wing ; the legs are yellow, spotted 

 with black.* These flies do not taste the turnips, but only 

 come to them on family business : they deposit their eggs 

 on the under side of the leaf, gluing them on the cuticle, 

 as already described in the instance of the gooseberry-grub. 

 In a very few days they were hatched ; from the eggs 

 had emerged the little caterpillars. On the 9th of August 

 these little creatures swarmed on every leaf. I walked 

 over field after field, and found them all in the same state. 

 On Mr. Moline's farm, at Old Pond, three men were hoe- 

 ing the turnips on a Saturday : I showed them the enemy, 

 and told them that the turnips would be thin enough by 

 Monday, without any hoeing; however, they were fanners' 

 men, and "knowed better." On Sunday I could not 

 get out as far as a turnip-field. On Monday I was again 



* This iusect is the Tenthreclo centifolise of Panzer, and was known as the 

 parent of the jiigger caterpillar even to Fabricius, who says " Larva tola nigra 

 victitat in Brassica B-apa quam destruit." But perhaps the most remarkable 

 fact in its published history is that a Norfolk fanner, a Mr. Marshall, connect- 

 ed the yellow fly with the nigger or canker, in a paper in the ' Transactions of 

 the Koyal Society ' for 1783. This author supposes that the fly is not a native 

 of this country, but comes from beyond the sea, as it was said to have been ob- 

 served by fishermen on the coast in "cloud-like flights." See Appendix 

 B. After the date of the letter reprinted in the text, viz., August 15, 1835, 

 our entomologists took up the subject with great zeal, and wrote about it in 

 various papers, periodicals or Transactions, or made verbal communications at 

 the rooms of the Entomological Society and elsewhere ; in fact the nigger was 

 the same fruitful subject to entomologists in 1836, that the potato-blight be- 

 came to botanists nine or ten years later: and I regret to say that the entomo- 

 logists, like the botanists, left their subject very much as they found it. The 

 nigger disappeared the following year, and the advice volunteered for its 

 extermination was neglected, and has since been completely forgotten. E. N. 



