194 
Observations on the various Insects 
and this may be readily imagined, for I have found great numbers 
of the Wireworms in the clubbed roots of cabbages, especially in 
the autumn. 
It is, however, the Turnip amongst the green crops which suffers 
the most severely I apprehend from the Wireworms ; and it is very 
remarkable that this invaluable vegetable should have the greatest 
number of formidable insect enemies to encounter, as we have 
already shown in the five published Memoirs. I believe there is 
no period of the year, if the winter be not very frosty, when they 
may not be found at their roots. It is, however, to the young 
plants that they do the most serious injury. On visiting the 
turnip-fields at Rougham, in Suffolk, with Mr. E. Bennet, we 
found the plants looking sickly and the outer leaves yellow ; on 
drawing them up a Wiveworm was invariably detected round the 
root of each, which had been gnawed by it (fig. 30) ; Mr. Bennet 
also observed them engaged in the same way the beginning of 
August, 1840. The worms varied in size from a Ime and a half 
(being the smallest I ever saw) to four lines, and latterly to three- 
quarteis of an inch, and in some instances two or three were 
attacking the same root. On the 9th of November in that year 
I found a Wireworm, as large as the one represented at fig. 2, at 
the root of a turnij) in a garden, and others of the same size have 
frequently occurred since. In September of the same year the 
Wireworm? were very abundant in Surrey, from six to eleven being 
found at a single turnip-root ; the fact is, that as the plants are 
destroyed and deserted by them, they march off to the nearest, 
and thus meeting at one spot they daily become more formidable 
to the remaining crop. They ate off the root from half to an inch 
below the base of the leaves, and it was often gnawed higher up 
(fig. 30, e). With these Wireworms was a snail (Helix) then 
alive, but being left together in a box, the former altacke<l and 
ate up a portion of the latter, and six of them were found within 
the shell at one time : from this it seems that they are sometimes 
carnivorous. In the western counties the Wireworms appear to 
have been still more formidable, for Mr. Hope* says: — " In the 
counties of Salop, Worcester, and Hereford, the failure of the 
crops of IS38 was very considerable, the real cause of it being 
little suspected or understood : I feel no hesitation in ascribing it 
almost entirely to the wonderful increase of Wireworms. In 
some instances I have, during the years 1836 and 1838, taken 
twenty and even thirty Wireworms feeding upon a single turnip- 
root." 
Mr. Le Keux has not neglected to attend to the economy of the 
Wireworm, in his investigations of the insects affecting the tur- 
nips;! from his observation it appears that the J'oliaye as well 
* Trans. Ent. Soc, vol. iii. p. 155. 
•I' Ibid., vol. ii. p. 32. 
