NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 95 



and in short of the life and conversation of these animals, is a 

 necessary step to lead us to some method of preventing their 

 depredations.* 



As far as I am a judge, nothing would recommend entomology 

 more than some neat plates that should well express the generic 

 distinctions of insects according to Linnaeus ; for I am well assured 

 that many people would study insects, could they set out with a 

 more adequate notion of those distinctions than can be conveyed 

 at first by words alone.f 



* Many good papers have been published upon the insects injurious to the husbandman 

 and gardener, and the Messrs. Loudon and Westwood have translated Keller's German 

 treatise upon " Noxious Insects." The harvest bug, as it is popularly termed, leptus 

 autittnnalis, Latreille, is generally very abundant where it does occur, and is extremely 

 troublesome ; it is, however, local, most abundant in the south, and in Scotland by no 

 means frequent ; it attacks both mankind and animals ; we have seen the nose of a|dog liter- 

 ally red with their numbers. The fly attacking bacon-hams Mr. Bennet refers as similar 

 to that which infests cheese, tyrophaga caseee, but of this I am not quite sure, and recom- 

 mend some of our readers who may keep hams up their chimneys to send specimens to 

 the "Gardener's Chronicle," who will submit them to their able entomologist Mr. 

 Westwood. The insect most usually known as the "turnip-fly" is, as Mr. White ob- 

 serves, a small beetle, haltica uemoruiii, by some called flea-beetle, from being an active 

 jumper. This minute insect commits most serious depredations to the crops when in the 

 seed-leaf, and some seasons a vast extent is destroyed. This present year, 1853, in the 

 south of Scotland, it has been extremely destructive, and a very great breadth of crop 

 has been sown a second time. The insect is very generally distributed, and I have never 

 missed finding it among a young crc$), but its depredations are most successful when dry 

 weather or any other cause prevents the young plant from growing freely and vigorously. 

 The best remedy, therefore, is to have the land well managed and in good condition from 

 manure ; in most seasons this will have the effect of producing the young plants strong 

 and healthy, and causing them to grow so rapidly as to be very soon beyond the ravages 

 of the fly. A clergyman at Dorste, in Hanover, mentions that he has employed, success- 

 fully, an infusion of wormwood to water the drills, or the application of very dry dust ; 

 but these could scarcely be employed upon a large extent of farm, although useful in a 

 garden. Numerous other applications are recommended, but one of the easiest, and said 

 to be efficacious, is that of smoke by means of weeds, or any other material kindled, so 

 as to be carried across the field by wind. There may be occasional seasons remarkable 

 for drought or cold, and inimical to rapid vegetation, but these are exceptional, and the 

 ordinary remedies will in all probability be unavailing. 



But there is another insect scourge to the turnip-field, which fortunately is not nearly 

 of such frequent occurrence ; it is one of those insects that return at times without 

 warning, the periodicity of which has not been accounted for. It belongs to the same 

 family as the caterpillar which attacks gooseberry-bushes, and which must be so generally 

 known, and both are the larva? of what are called " saw-flies." The caterpillars do the 

 injury, and when they do appear they are in thousands, and soon strip the tender or leaf- 

 part of the turnip plant, which is sometimes in a considerably advanced state when the 

 ravages commence, generally after hoeing has been performed. The surest remedy is 

 hand-picking by children. This is the Athalia centifolia of entomologists ; the popular 

 name of the caterpillar " black dolphin." 



t There are several works now of this kind. Curtis's " British' Entomology" has 

 dissections of the parts from which the generic characters are taken, but this is expensive. 

 Westwood's ' ; Introduction .to the Modern Classification of Insects" gives capital wood- 

 cut illustrations of the parts, besides other information. This work is in 2 vols. 8vo. 



