56 
GOOSEBERRY-GRUB. 
his cabbages ; and then he will give you a toss of his wise 
head, and utter, with a gravity quite in keeping, " I knew 
tliere would be a blight this year ; I saw it coming in the 
air." Perhaps, however, he may find a good many snails 
eating his wall-fruit ; or may, perchance, tread on two or 
three great stag beetles while perfomiing then' evening- 
perambulation along his gravelled walks ; and then, he 
" knew it would be either a blight or a sneg ; but it's more 
of a sneg this year." Further than this, the horticulturist 
has not progressed ; webs and soft insects are ^blights;' 
snails and hard insects are 'snegs.' Warm south-east winds 
produce the first ; cold north-east winds, the last ; and yet 
the same man would laugh in your face if you were to say 
seriously, on a cold misty morning, There will be a rise 
in the funds tomorrow, I can see it in the air." I main- 
tain that there can hardly be a greater service performed 
to horti- and agri-culturists, than by pointing out to them 
the nature and habits of their insect enemies; and their 
laughing at us in the first instance, will perhaps be repaid 
by their thanking us at last. 
I have never known the Gooseberry-grub * such a 
nuisance as it has been this year. In April 1 saw the fly 
v ery busy on the wing, and it continued so to the middle 
of May. I prophesied the havoc it would make, but I 
managed to save my own gooseberries by keeping the gar- 
den in a cloud of smoke for the benefit of the apple-trees ; 
a practice not altogether grateful to the optics or olfacto- 
ries, but decidedly beneficial to the fruit-crops, not that the 
* It is necessary to observe that in arranging these Letters for the press, I 
have disregarded the chronological order of their appearance. The present 
letter on the gooseberry-grub was the last written, having been printed in the 
' Entomologist,' so lately as August, 1841. Those which follow were originally 
published about eight years earlier. — E. N. 
