218 TURNIP ENEMIES FINGER-AND-TOE. 



tacks, either because its short life, in the interim, has 

 come to a close, or because it has been driven by the 

 famine of its land to seek a subsistence elsewhere. 



But a much more untractable difficulty, and in 

 all likelihood caused by an insect of another race, is 

 encountered in a disease of this root known by the 

 descriptive name of finger-and-toe, of recent origin, 

 now spreading over the country, and sparing neither 

 garden nor farm. It has already rendered the cul- 

 tivation of turnip in many fields abortive; and in 

 some gardens, to the regret of their owners, this 

 most wholesome of roots has been necessarily aban- 

 doned. Not being able to prescribe a cure, it is of 

 some importance, as it may save the trouble of ex- 

 periments already made, to tell what will not be a 

 cure. Neither liming nor trenching will; neither 

 remote nor recent manuring, nor sowing without 

 dung, is of any avail: and there is no distinction 

 of Swedish or globe or yellow or greentop or red in 

 respect of this disease. And whilst it is true that if 

 the crop has suffered one year it will, tried on the same 

 ground the year following, prove worse or altogether 

 nugatory; it is equally true, that the disease has 

 shown its worst type where turnip had never grown 

 before since the creation of the world. I allude to 

 a piece of road, time out of mind a highway, taken 

 up, trenched, and added to the adjacent field. The 

 field was in turnips, and the disease was more or 

 less over the field; but on the line of old road the 

 crop was ridiculous. 



Much might be said in the way of reasonable 



