246 OUR INSECT FRIENDS AND FOES 



holes in the turnip leaves, but skipping off 

 directly they are alarmed, their rapid jumping 

 movements from leaf to leaf producing a curious 

 pattering sound, almost like falling rain. 



The female Turnip Flea Beetle lays her eggs 

 on the under-surface of the rough turnip leaf, 

 and in ten days the young whitish-yellow, fleshy, 

 cylindrical-bodied larvae hatch out. Directly they 

 emerge from the eggs, these larvae set to work to 

 gnaw through the lower skin into the soft pulp 

 of the leaf, and thence make their way onwards, 

 eating out winding burrows inside it. Safely 

 housed within these burrows, they feed for about 

 six days, and then they come out and bury them- 

 selves at a depth of about an inch and a half in 

 the soil, at the foot of the plant upon which they 

 have been feeding. They then pass into the 

 pupal stage, which lasts for about fourteen days, 

 at the end of which time they emerge as perfect 

 beetles. It is as the adult beetle that this 

 insect does the most serious damage, for it not 

 only gnaws the seed-leaves (cotyledons) and 

 the tender young plant when it first springs 

 into growth, so as to frequently totally destroy 

 it, but also gnaws large holes in the foliage of 

 more advanced crops, thereby causing very 

 serious injury. 



In the year 1881 this country suffered from 

 the most severe and general attack of the 

 Turnip Flea Beetle hitherto recorded, the havoc 

 caused by the insects amounting practically to a 

 national calamity. Some idea of the vast extent 

 of the damage caused by these minute beetles, 

 insects measuring but a twelfth of an inch in 



