388 THE CABBAGE CEOP. 



pale yellow freckled with black. These butterflies, which 

 make their appearance regularly each season, are happily 

 kept more or less within bounds by several different para- 

 sitic insects, which puncture their bodies, and thus pro- 

 cure a suitable nidus for the eggs which they deposit in 

 them. The eggs in due time generate maggots, which 

 feed upon the bodies that hatched them, and thus befriend 

 the farmer, by destroying the insect that so frequently 

 destroys his crops. 



When a crop is attacked badly by these caterpillars, it is 

 difficult to stay the injury they inflict. Broad-casting 

 soot, salt, and lime, early in the morning, while the dew 

 is on the plants, will frequently do good service; or the 

 plants, if there be not too great a breadth of them, may 

 be shaken, and the caterpillars that fall off be killed with 

 the foot. Ducks driven through the fields, if the plants 

 be not too advanced in growth, will clear them off; while 

 the large class of insectivorous birds all of them real 

 frier ds to the farmer are on the look-out for them, and 

 no doubt dispose satisfactorily of large numbers. In 

 Eussia they cultivate cabbages largely in the hemp fields, 

 taking them in alternate rows. The hemp is said to be 

 obnoxious to the butterfly, and thus preserves the cab- 

 bage from its attacks, while the latter occupies profitably 

 the wide intermediate spaces necessary between the rows 

 of the erect-growing hemp plants. While these caterpillars 

 are at work chiefly on the outside leaves, the inner por- 

 tion or heart of the plant is being bored into, by those 

 of the "cabbage-moth" Noctua brassicce; the larvae, 

 too, of other smaller moths frequently attack the same 

 portions of the plant, and inflict great injuries on the crop. 



The chemistry of the cabbage plant has lately received 

 more consideration, since the attention of our farmers 

 has been attracted to it by the great advantages it offers 

 as a crop in our advanced systems of farming. The pro- 



