Short Communications. 67 S 



ground, and had it dug in. The plants were then planted 

 from 20 to 25 in a row and so effectual was the soot, that, 

 instead of losing 8 or 10 plants in one row, as I before had 

 done, I think I did not lose more than that number in a bed 

 of 200 or 300. In the grub's attacks on plants of the cab- 

 bage family, its habit is to eat some nearly and others quite 

 asunder, a little below the heart : it often greatly annoys 

 the farmers in their turnip fields. I have made use of the 

 same remedy since, and have never found it to fail. Last 

 summer I was troubled with the grub in a bed of pinks : I 

 then made some soot water, and with it watered the bed well, 

 and the bed was soon freed from the grubs. The precise 

 mode of the soot's action on the grubs I cannot state; but 

 I believe that the ammoniacal matter which it contains destroys 

 some, and disperses the remainder. I shall gladly receive any 

 information on this head. I have not found the soot injure 

 the soil at all ; and I name this because I had been told 

 it would. — W. Deni/er. Residmg zvith Mr, J. D. Parks. 

 Dartford Nursery, Jan. 18. 1833, 



On the Habits of the Triphaena (Noctua) jpronuha we have 

 registered some facts in p. 504. Mr. Denyer's facts, besides 

 their value in a gardening point of view, are an additional 

 contribution to the history of the insect, as farther instancing 

 its likings, and teaching us its dislike of soot. — J. T). 



In a piece of ground attached to my present place of abode, 

 which I did not take possession of until April, 1833, 1 sowed, 

 so late as early in May, a small bed of onions. A plentiful 

 crop arose from the sowing ; but from then till now (Sept. 1 2.), 

 the onion plants have kept withering until half are gone. As 

 the herbage or upper part of the onion was in some cases 

 wholly, in others partly, eaten through at the earth's face, it 

 seemed clearly the work of insects ; but as, on looking once or 

 twice, I could not find any likely to have effected the mischief, 

 and as I found the part of the onion bulb (very small, of 

 course, from the late sowing) in the soil partly decayed as 

 well as eaten, I concluded that the decay had preceded the 

 insect's (of whatever kind or kinds) eating, and was conse- 

 quently owing to some condition of the soil or season ungenial 

 to the onions' health and welfare. However, since the soak- 

 ing rains which fell on Sept. 1st, 2d, and 3d, I have observed 

 the onions to disappear altogether at one end of the bed ; and 

 this sight prompted me, on Sept. l-t., to dig the whole up. 

 The bed was 7ft. long by 3| ft. wide; and, in this area, I 

 found forty-seven grubs ; most of them full grown, but some 

 of them not quite so. I have imprisoned some of them in 

 a pot filled with soil, in the hope of securing a nioth or 



