196 THE MANSE GARDEN. 



drier weather may impede their travels. The fly 

 indeed will but rarely renew its attacks, either be- 

 cause 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 culti- 

 vation of turnip in many fields abortive ; and in some 

 gardens, to the regret of their owners, this most 

 wholesome of roots has been necessarily abandoned. 

 Not being able to prescribe a cure, it is of some 

 importance, as it may save the trouble of experiments 

 already made, to tell what will riot 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 green-top 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 fol- 

 lowing, 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 Jess over the field ; but 

 on the line of old road the crop was ridiculous. 



Much might be said in the way of reasonable 

 conjecture, but nothing is more useless. Let prc- 



