104' TURNIP FLY. 



variety of the musca putris of Linnaeus. It is to be 

 seen in the summer in farm kitchens, on the bacon- 

 racks, and about the mantel-pieces, and on the 

 ceilings. 



The insect that infests turnips, and many crops 

 in the garden, (destroying often whole fields, 

 while in their seedling leaves,) is an animal that 

 wants to be better known. The country people 

 here call it the turnip fly and black dolphin ; 

 but I know it to be one of the coleoptera, the 

 " chrysomela oleracea, saltatoria, femoribus posticis 

 crassissimis V In very hot summers they abound 

 to an amazing degree, and, as you walk in a field, 

 or in a garden, make a pattering like rain, by jump- 

 ing on the leaves of the turnips or cabbages. 



1 This is most probably the haltica nemorum, called by 

 the farmers the Fly and Black Jack, so well described by 

 Messrs. Kirby and Spence, in their admirable chapters on 

 Indirect Injuries. It attacks and devours the first cotyledon 

 leaves, as soon as they are unfolded; so that, on account 

 of their ravages the land is often obliged to be resown, 

 and with no better success. By these entomologists it is 

 stated, on the authority of an eminent agriculturist, that 

 from this cause alone, the loss sustained in the turnip 

 crops in Devonshire, in 1786, was not less than 100,000/. 

 Great damage is also sometimes done by the little curculio 

 contractus, which in the same manner pierces a hole in 

 the cuticle. When the plant is more advanced, and out 

 of danger from these pigmy foes, the black larva of a 

 saw-fly takes their place, and occasionally does no little 

 mischief, whole districts being sometimes stripped by 

 them, and in 1783 many thousand acres were on this 

 account ploughed up. The caterpillar of Papilio brassica 

 is sometimes found in great numbers, and the wire-worm 

 also does occasionally great damage, both to turnips and 

 other vegetable and flower roots. Mr. Kirby mentions a 

 field in which one-fourth was destroyed, and which the 

 owner calculated at 100/. One year the same person sowed 

 a field three times with turnips, which were twice wholly, 

 and the third time a great part, cut off by this insect. 

 W. J. 



