188 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



beautiful tiger-moth {Bombyx Caja, F.), another the pot- 

 herb-moth (Noctua oleracea, F.), a third anonymous, 

 described by Reaumur as beginning at the root, eating 

 itself a mansion in the stem, and so destroying the plant 

 before it cabbages 2 . And when they are come to their 

 perfection and appear fit for the table, their beauty and 

 delicacy are often marred by the troublesome earwig, 

 which, insinuating itself into them, defiles them with its 

 excrements. — What more acceptable vegetable in the 

 spring than brocoli ? Yet how dreadfully is its foliage 

 often ravaged in the autumn by numerous hordes of the 

 cabbage-butterfly ! so that, in an extensive garden, you 

 will sometimes see nothing left of the leaves except the 

 veins and stalks. — What more useful, again, than the 

 cabbage? Besides the same insect, which injures them 

 in a similar way, in some countries they are infested by 

 the caterpillar of a most destructive moth [Noctua Bras- 

 sicce, F.), to which indeed I have before alluded b ; which, 

 not content with the leaves, penetrates into the very 

 heart of the plant c . — One of the most delicate and ad- 

 mired of all table vegetables, concerning which gardeners 

 are most apt to pride themselves, and bestow much pains 

 to produce in perfection, I mean the cauliflower, is often 

 attacked by a fly, which ovipositing in that part of the 

 stalk covered by the earth, the maggots when hatched 

 occasion the plant to wither and die, or to produce a 

 worthless head d . Even when the head is good and 

 handsome, if not carefully examined previous to being 



a Reaum. ii. 471. b See above, p. 29. c De Geer, ii. 440. 



d Perhaps this fly is the same which Linne confounded with Musctt 

 Larvarum, h., which he says he had found in the roots of the cab- 

 bage {Syst. Nat. 992.78.). I say "confounded," because it is not 



