386 THE ENTOMOLOGIST, 



the Border counties. Turnips might be sown early or very 

 late, in either extreme there was no palliative, so long as 

 drought prevailed ; and plants, insufficient in force for the 

 maintenance of the devouring myriads, kept up merely a 

 feeble and struggling existence. It was only through the 

 advent of showers long delayed, and a mild atmosphere, that 

 the crops got established, and at length out-grew their per- 

 sistent persecutors ; for not only did they swarm on the seed 

 lobes, but continued to perforate the foliage and delay the 

 growth, long after the plants were singled out; some even 

 lingering in the fields till there were sizeable turnips. Near 

 the sea-side the damage was not so great as further inland. 

 My own Swedes did not require to be re-sown ; but, as for 

 the while tinnips, it was by mere dint of persevering sowing 

 that the ground got covered at all. Some parts of the fields, 

 here, produce wild mustard, or '^runch" (Sinapis arvensis). 

 This was found to be a great preservative to the young 

 turnip-plants, in allowing them to assume the rough leaf 

 unbitlen. The beetles took as readily to the mustard as to 

 the turnip, it being their natural food ; and I noticed that 

 when the Swedes were nearly forward for thinning, the 

 mustard obtained the preference. Owing to this, although 

 the insects in some places lay on the plants like gunpowder, 

 after side-hoeing and thinning the blanks were very few. 

 1 have heard that in other places, where mustard is in the 

 soil, this also happened; so that it is not an unmitigated 

 evil ; being, in such seasons as the present, equivalent to 

 thick sowing, in fields not liable to this weed. 



1 had previously remarked that the cruciferous wild plants 

 (Arabis and Cardamine) on the dry banks were unwontedly 

 frittered away during the present dry spring;, but had no 

 conception that such assemblages would spring, as it were, 

 out of the dust so suddenly. If these feeding-grounds did 

 not furnish all, they, at least, augmented the bands that 

 gathered in on every side to invade the cultivated lands. It 

 is wonderful, after all, that such a favourable crop has been 

 realised. The disastrous outset in this district was, with the 

 e.tcepiion of the partial loss of the Swedes, in some measure 

 re])aire(l ; and it w as only some stubborn clayey fields that 

 continued bare fallow, in spite of the master's skill. 



Mr. Langlands has kindly furnished a notice of what 



