316 CULTURE OF FARM CROPS. 



Not the less true is this if applied to root culture ; 

 many and many a plant has the writer stuck in blank 

 spaces in drills, and with what degree of after satisfaction 

 the reader may judge. There are, by the way, some points 

 connected with this same subject of transplanting, to which 

 we shall direct the attention of the reader at the conclu- 

 sion of the chapter on mangold and beet-root culture. 



116. Enemies and Diseases of the Turnip. The reader 

 who has perused our remarks upon the enemies and the 

 diseases of the wheat crop, in the volume in this series, 

 entitled Wheat, its Culture, Diseases, and Preservation, 

 may fancy in looking over the long list, that few crops are 

 so afflicted, so to say. Numerous, however, as are the enemies 

 and diseases of the wheat crop, they are scarcely to be 

 compared to those which afflict the turnip crop. There is 

 probably no crop which has so many as this ; no fewer 

 than forty insects, together with a number of slugs and 

 snails, are said by a distinguished naturalist to prey upon 

 the turnip ; and independently of these we have the scourge 

 of the finger and toe, and of the anbury. " The ants," 

 says the Rev. Mr. Houghton, in the " Popular Science 

 Review," " the ants run off with the seed as soon as it is 

 sown ; that which is spared by the ants is attacked the 

 moment the tender leaves appear above the surface by one 

 of the most formidable, albeit diminutive, enemies of all, 

 namely, the little flea-beetle, popularly known throughout 

 England as ' the fly.' Should the crop weather this 

 storm, another blasting influence occasionally attacks it in 

 the shape of the 'nigger' caterpillars of the turnip saw- 

 fly (Athalia spinarum), and the larvse of the white butter- 

 flies; these soon make skeletons of the leaves, and defile 

 them by their excrements. Beneath the cuticles of the 

 leaves the larvse of different kinds of two- winged flies ex- 

 cavate their winding tunnels ; other dipterous larvse riddle 

 the turnip bulbs with innumerable mines, while the smother- 

 fly, in two or three of its species (Aphis'), entirely destroys 

 the leaves. Fat grubs bad luck to them ! the larvse of 

 certain moths, bite off the young root, and sever it from 



