Turnip Sa*w-FIy. 199 



the insects with avidity, eyeing both sides of the leaf, lest they 

 should miss such palatable morsels. Mr. Sells, in a communi- 

 cation read before the Entomological Society, but not yet pub- 

 lished, has entered into an extended detail, showing the beneficial 

 i-esults of this plan, adopted upon a large scale, near Kingston 

 on Thames. " Thus," says Rusticus, " two birds are killed 

 with one stone : the ducks are fatted, and the turnips saved. 

 You may depend on it," he adds, " the blacks have some 

 natural enemy beside ducks ; if not, ducks would do very well, 

 except that the demand for ducks would be greater, I fear, than 

 the supply. But a farmer, especially if he has water, ought to 

 keep an immensity of ducks : they are always useful, as they eat 

 such lots of slugs and other vermin ; and, if within a moderate 

 distance of London, always saleable at a paying price." 



I would also recommend, upon the appearance of the bright 

 orange-coloured flies in a turnip field, the employment of chil- 

 dren for the purpose of collecting and killing them, prevention 

 being always better than cure. That the insects are easily to be 

 seen, is evident from the observation of an old turnip-hoer to 

 W. C, in the month of August: — " It is of no use hoeing these 

 turnips, for I perceive this year a fly which is the forerunner of 

 the nigger caterpillar." But it would have been of use if a 

 troop of children had been turned into the field, and the plants 

 cleared of " the fly." On this subject, I am sure it will be 

 profitable to quote a passage from a letter received by me from 

 Mr. Spence, pointing out the too ordinary practice both of horti- 

 culturists and agriculturists (like the Carter and Jupiter), in 

 calling for aid from washes, &c., when a little manual exertion 

 would better rid them of their enemies, were they only inclined 

 to set their own shoulders to the wheel : — " How often does one 

 enter a garden with the cabbages dissected to shreds by cater- 

 pillars, and the owner enquiring of every one for some recondite 

 mode of killing them ; when, if he would offer to two or three lads 

 a penny a quart for all they could pick off, his cabbages would 

 be cleared of every assailant in a few hours ; and in the same 

 way he might have the aphides crushed off any plant particularly 

 valuable, and the caterpillars collected from his gooseberry 

 and currant bushes, by shaking them suddenly over two or three 

 newspapers laid round them. Even on a large scale, it might 

 be worth trying if it would not answer, to employ boys to brush 

 off with some light kind of whisk the aphides from hops, when 

 extensively attacked, on sheets spread below, when they could 

 be easily collected and destroyed; and, if a few thousand ducks 

 can clear a district of turnips from the blacks, there seems no 

 reason (seeing that, however fast the ducks gobble, their stomachs 

 have no great capacity, and must therefore soon be filled) why 

 an army of boys, collected from all the neighbouring villages^ 



o 4 



