70 



CULINARY OR KITCHEN GARDEN. 



than good in this. Rooks and moles are also 

 very serviceable in keeping down this pest of the 

 garden and the field. Spirit of tar, dug into 

 the ground, at the rate of 1 gallon to 50 square 

 yards, has been with us a satisfactory remedy ; 

 and to render the liquid more divisible, we ab- 

 sorb it in dry sand, or dry finely-sifted coal- 

 ashes, and then sow the ground with it. The 

 refuse lime of gas-works, which contains in gene- 

 ral a considerable amount of impure sulphuret 

 of lime, or lime combined loosely with sul- 

 phuretted hydrogen — a gas the most deleterious 

 of all others to animal life — has been employed 

 with singular effect also. The mole lives chiefly 

 on the wire-worm for a great portion of the 

 year. In cold wet seasons the wire-worm is 

 most destructive. And, in fact, where ground 

 is overrun with wire-worm, it is not a bad way 

 of clearing it, to sow old seed of beans in drills, 

 and to take them up after the first week once 

 every two or three days, when the beans will 

 be found thickly perforated by the insects, 

 which may be destroyed and the beans re-sown 

 again. 



The gamma moth (Plusia gamma of some 

 naturalists, Noctua gamma of others), fig, 20. 



Fig. 20. 



THE GAMMA MOTH. 



This very pretty moth may be described as 

 having beautiful glossy greyish-coloured upper 

 wings, marbled with brown, having a slight 

 metallic shade ; about the middle of each is a 

 gold shining mark, resembling the Greek letter 

 y, from which circumstance it derives its name ; 

 the under wings are of a pale ash- colour with a 

 brown edge ; the head and collar purplish- 

 brown, margined with grey lines; abdomen 

 yellowish-grey, having elevated tufts of hairs. 



The caterpillar is green, with several short 

 single hairs interspersed over it ; four small 

 whitish-yellow lines down its back, and a broad 

 yellow stripe along each side ; head brownish 

 green ; furnished with twelve feet — two behind, 

 four abdominal, and six fore-feet. The female 

 deposits her eggs, which are hemispherical, on 

 the under sides of the leaves, in a somewhat 

 regular manner ; they are said to lay four hun- 

 dred of these eggs at a time. 



These caterpillars are found pretty abundant 

 during the summer, feeding on lettuce, beans, 

 pease, and even wormwood, thistles, and sage. 

 They made considerable ravages in France in 

 the year 1735, according to Reaumur, during 

 the month of July, eating up all the leguminous 

 vegetables, leaving nothing but the stalks. They 

 are found all over Europe, in Siberia, China, and 

 North America. They first make their appear- 



ance about April, and continue in full vigour till 

 October, when they deposit their eggs, which 

 are hatched at various times from May to Sep- 

 tember, but chiefly during July. These cater- 

 pillars commit sad havoc in the south of Eng- 

 land ; rarely, however, in Scotland, where they 

 are only found troublesome in dry warm sum- 

 mers. There are four generations of moths 

 during the season, and when we consider that a 

 single pair can produce 80,000 eggs, which, 

 barring accident, might become the progenitors 

 of 16,000,000 of caterpillars in little more than 

 twelve months, it is wonderful that they do not 

 injure our gardens more than they usually do. 

 Their attacks are pretty general, but, with the 

 exception of lentils, they seem to prefer legu- 

 minous plants. The only means of subduing 

 them appears to be capturing the insect in its 

 moth state, hand-picking the caterpillars, or, 

 as recommended for other insects which drop 

 either from fear or from concussion, shaking the 

 crop smartly, and receiving the caterpillars in a 

 cloth spread along both sides of the rows. If 

 merely shaken off, they would soon reascend 

 the plant and renew their attacks upon it. 



General remarks. — The European names of 

 the garden-bean are — boon, Dutch ;fava, Italian; 

 five de marais, French ; alver janas, Spanish ; 

 and grosse bohne, German. 



Where saving seed is an object, a row or two, 

 according to their length, and the quantity of 

 seed required, should be left ungathered ; for 

 it is a bad way to gather the best of the crop, 

 and to save the last formed, and consequently 

 the weakest and worst, for seed ; a sure way to 

 deteriorate the quality of the sort, and render a 

 variety that a long succession of years' careful 

 cultivating and selecting has been spent in pro- 

 ducing, worthless, by the mismanagement of one 

 season. Even then only the finest pods should 

 be saved ; and to prevent accident, the crop 

 should be gone over just as the pods are fully 

 swelled, and all the smallest removed. This 

 will throw additional strength into the pods 

 left for seed, and insure a pure stock. Beans, 

 like pease, keep best in the straw, therefore 

 they should, when properly winnowed, be laid 

 up in bundles, and placed in a dry airy loft. 

 The seeds will retain their vitality longer than 

 the pea, and if well kept, will grow after four 

 or five years. 



The inorganic constituents of the bean are — 

 100,000 parts of seed contain 2136, and 

 100,000 parts of the straw contain 3121 parts 

 of inorganic matter, consisting of : — 





Seed. 



Straw. 



Potash 



415 



1656 



Soda 



816 



50 



Lime 



165 



624 



Magnesia 



158 



209 



Alumina . 



34 



10 



Oxide of iron 





7 



Oxide of manganese 





5 



Silica 



126 



220 



Sulphuric acid . 



89 



34 



Phosphoric acid . 



292 



226 



Chlorine . 



41 



80 



ENOEL, 



2136 



3121 



The composition of the bean is thus given in 

 " The Book of the Farm," vol. i. p. 1300 :— 



