1 04 Insects most injurious to Cultivators : — 



very first coming up of the plant ? since there would be no 

 necessity for their living through the winter, like some butter- 

 flies, to deposit their eggs in the following spring or summer ; 

 that is, at the period when they are thus stated to be found 

 alive. Again, if the eggs were deposited upon the seed, how did 

 it happen that the grubs were very various in size ? 



1 have not entered into any detail relative to the experiments 

 of Rusticus, because, having stated the substance of these ob- 

 jections to the views of that writer in the Magazine of Natural 

 History for the year 1834<, he subsequently, in a flippant article 

 upon the subject [Entomological Magazine, vol. ii. p. 505^), says, 

 " I will hint (to others writing on the subject) that the eggs are 

 not laid upon the seed, as I once supposed."* After such an 

 admission, it might, perhaps, be thought needless to have entered 

 at all upon the objections to the hypothesis that the egg is laid 

 upon the seed, and, consequently, deposited in the ground ; but 

 the same line of reasoning may be employed in opposition to the 

 very common opinion, that the eggs are deposited in manure. 



With the view, therefore, of obtaining a more precise know- 

 ledge of the natural history of the insect than had before been 

 made known, the Entomological Society, in 1834, offered a prize 

 for the best essay on the subject; and consequently received 

 several communications, embodying many facts relative to the 

 habits of the insects. These documents have not yet been pub- 

 lished by the Society ; and it must, therefore, be evident, that I, as 

 its secretary, am, for the present, precluded from making any use 

 of the materials thus collected together. I think myself justified, 

 however, in stating that it has been ascertained that the eggs are 

 deposited upon the leaves of the turnip ; a fact, indeed, which 

 analogy would have led us to expect, in conjunction with the 

 assertion of Latreille, that the Halticae " devastent souvent les 

 feuilles des vegetaux qui sont propres a leur nourriture : leurs 

 larves en rongent le parenchyme et s'y metamorphosent ;" [often 

 destroy the leaves of the plants suitable for their nourishment, 

 by their larvae devouring the parenchyma, and these undergoing 

 their metamorphoses;] and of Rusticus, who says that the grubs 

 feed upon the leaves of the plant. 



Let us now endeavour to combine the knowledge thus ob- 

 tained (in the absence of the further details in the possession of 

 the Entomological Society) with the facts already known. It is 

 known that, as soon as the plant appears, it is attacked by the 

 perfect insect, which cannot, therefore, have been produced from 



* It is essential that this statement should be made as public as possible, 

 to counteract the erroneous impressions produced by the publication of the 

 former observations of this writer, which have been translated and published 

 in the Horticulteur Beige, the Annates de ta Societe E7itomologiqtie de France ; 

 and in Newman's Grammar of Entomology. 



