324. 



PART III. 

 MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE. 



Art. I. General Notices. 



Insects injurious in Horticulture. — In the summer of 1826, when at 

 Brussels, I observed that delicious vegetable of the cabbage tribe so largely 

 cultivated there, under the name of Jets de choux, and which in England 

 we call Brussels sprouts, to be materially injured in the later stages of its 

 growth by the attacks of the turnip-flea, and other little beetles of the 

 same genus (Haltica), which were so numerous and so universally preva- 

 lent, that I scarcely ever examined a full-grown plant from which a vast 

 number might not have been collected. Some plants were almost black 

 with them, the species most abundant being of a dark aeneous tinge. They 

 had not merely eroded the cuticle in various parts, so as to give the leaves 

 a brown blistered appearance, but had also eaten them into large holes, at 

 the margin of which I often saw them in the act of gnawing ; and the 

 stunted and unhealthy appearance of the plants, sufficiently indicated the 

 injurious effect of this interruption of the proper office of the sap. What 

 was particularly remarkable, considering the locomotive powers of these 

 insects, was that the young turnips, sown in August after the wheat and 

 rye, close to acres of Brussels sprouts (which all round Brussels are planted 

 in the open fields among other crops) infested by myriads of these insects, 

 were not more eaten by them than they usually are in England, and i)ro- 

 duced good average crops. It would seem, agreeably to the fact already 

 mentioned (see Introd. to Entomol., vol. i. 4th edit. p. 589.), that they prefer 

 the taste of leaves to which they have been accustomed, to younger plants 

 of the same natural family; and hence, perhaps, the previous sowing of a 

 crop of cabbage plants in the corner of a field meant for turnips, might 

 allure and keep there the great bulk of these insects present in the vici- 

 nity, until the turnips were out of danger. {Kirby and Spence's Introd. 

 to Entomology, vol.i. p. 189. note c, 5th edit.) 



Hypogymna dispar. — These larvae were so extremely numerous in 1826, 

 on the limes of the Allee Verte at Brussels, that many of the trees of that 

 noble avenue, though of great age, were nearly deprived of their leaves, 

 and afforded little of the shade which the unusual heat of the summer so 

 urgently required. The moths which in autumn proceeded from them, 

 when in motion towards night, swarmed like bees, and subsequently on the 

 trunk of every tree might be seen scores of females depositing their down- 

 covered patch of eggs. In the park they were also very abundant; and it 

 may be safely asserted that, if one half of the eggs deposited were to be 

 hatched, in 1827 scarcely a leaf would remain in either of those favourite 

 places of public resort. Happily, however, this calamity seems likely to be 

 prevented. Of the vast number of patches of eggs which I saw on almost 

 every tree in the park about the, end of September, I could two months 

 afterwards, to my no small surprise, discover scarcely one, though the sin- 

 gularity of the fact made me examine closely. For their disappearance, f 

 have no doubt, the inhabitants of Brussels are indebted to the titmouse 



