INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 187 



does not seem to affect their growth. Great mischief is 

 occasionally clone to the young plants by the wire-worm. 

 I was shown a field last summer in which they had de- 

 stroyed one-fourth of the crop, and the gentleman who 

 showed them to me calculated that his loss by them 

 would be 100/. One year he sowed a field thrice with 

 turnips, which were twice wholly, and the third time in 

 great part, cut off by this insect. — Whether the disease 

 to which turnips are subject, in some parts of the 

 kingdom, from the form of the excrescences into which 

 the bulb shoots, called Jlngers and toes, be occasioned by 

 insects, is not certainly known a . 



We have wandered long enough about the fields to 

 observe the progress of insect devastation ; let us now 

 return home to visit the domains of Flora and Pomona, 

 that we may see whether their subjects are exposed to 

 equal maltreatment. If we begin with the Icitchen-gar- 

 den, we shall find that its various productions, minister- 

 ing so materially to our daily comfort and enjoyment, 

 almost all suffer more or less from the attack of the ani- 

 mals we are considering. — Thus, the earliest of our ta- 

 ble dainties, radishes, are devoured by the maggot of a 

 fly (Musca Radicnm, L.), and our lettuces by the cater- 

 pillars of several species of moth ; one of which is the 



species, so common on the flowers of siliquose plants (Irisecta Sue. 

 cica, iii. 142.), asks if his R. sulcicollis (C. Pleurostigma,lZ. B.), which 

 agrees with it in most respects, except in having toothed thighs, be 

 not the other sex ? This query I can solve in the negative, having 

 taken the sexes of R. assimilis in coitu, which do not differ, save that 

 the male has a somewhat shorter rostrum. 



a Spence's Observations on the Disease in Turnips called Fingers 

 and Toes. Hull 183 2. 8vo, 



