156 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



and stalks. — What more useful, again, than the cabbage? 

 Besides the same insect, which injures them in a similar way, 

 and a species of field-bug {Pentatoma ornata), which pierces 

 the leaves like a sieve ^, in some countries they are infested by 

 the caterpillar of a most destructive moth (^Mamestra Bras- 

 siccb), to which I have before alluded ; which, not content with 

 the leaves, penetrates into the very heart of the plant.^ — 

 One of the most delicate and admired 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.^ Even when the head is good and handsome, 

 if not carefully examined previous to being cooked, it is often 

 rendered disgusting by earwigs that have crept into it, or the 

 green caterpillar of Pontia Rapce. In 1836, as we learn from 



1 Kollar on Ins. inj. to Gardeners, &c. p. 148. 



2 De Geer, ii. 440. In the summer of 1826 when at Brussels, I observed 

 that delicious vegetable of the cabbage tribe so largely cultivated there under the 

 name of Jets de choux, and which in England we call Brussels sprouts, to be 

 materially injured in the later stages of its growth by the attacks of the turnip- 

 flea, and other little beetles of the same genus (^Haltica), which were so numer- 

 ous and so universally prevalent, that I scarcely ever examined a full-grown 

 plant from which a vast number might not have been collected. Some plants 

 ■were almost black with them, the species most abundant being of a dark copper 

 tinge. They had not merely eroded the cuticle in various parts, so as to give 

 the leaves a brown blistered appearance, but had also eaten them into large 

 holes, at the margin of which I often saw them in the act of gnawing ; and the 

 stunted and unhealthy appearance of the plants sufficiently indicated the inju- 

 rious effect of this interruption of the proper office of the sap. What was par- 

 ticularly remarkable, considering the locomotive powers of these insects, was 

 that the young turnips, sown in August after the wheat and rye, close to acres 

 of Brussels sprouts (which all round Brussels are planted in the open fields 

 among other crops), infested by myriads of these insects, were not more eaten 

 by them than they usually are in England, and produced good average crops. 

 It would seem, agreeably to a fact which I shall mention in its place in speaking 

 of the food of insects, that they prefer the taste of leaves to which they have been 

 accustomed, to younger plants of the same natural family ; and hence perhaps 

 the previous sowing of a crop of cabbage-plants in the corner of a field meant 

 for turnips, might allure and keep there the great bulk of these insects present in 

 the vicinity, until the turnips were out of danger. 



3 Perhaps this fly is the same which Linne confounded with Tachina Larvarum, 

 which he says he had found in the roots of the cabbage (Syst. Nat, 992. 78.). 

 I say " confounded," because it is not likely that the same species should be 

 parasitic in an insect, and also inhabit a vegetable. It is obviously the same 

 described by Kollar from Bouche under the name of Antliomyia Brassicce (159.), 

 •which he states often destroys whole fields of cabbages by boring into the roots 

 and stalks. 



