TURNIP-FLY. 
91. 
There will perhaps be some who ask the use of all this : 
who want to know why the blights are to be brought out 
of their hiding-places and hauled over and written into no- 
tice : who will tell you that the oaks and the quicksets 
have lived on through all their trouble, and despite the at- 
tacks of all their enemies : the teetotallers, too, will doubt- 
less turn up their noses and gravely assert that if all the 
hops and all the apples were destroyed by vermin it would 
be a good job, because it would stop the supplies of beer 
and cider : others may contend that the evil done is ac- 
companied by good : for example, that the ravages of the 
hop-fly keep up the price of the hop, so as to afford a tole- 
rable profit to the grower ; whereas, were there to be no 
fly, the crop would be larger than the consumption, and 
the price consequently not a remunerating one. By the 
way, I well recollect, that after the immense crop of 
1826, the price did not repay the grower his rent, taxes 
and labour : and the farmers, a set of men, I am sorry to 
say it, with less forethought generally than any other class 
of tradesmen, most improvidently went to work and were 
silly enough to grub up their hop-yards and sow wheat. 
This took place in several instances in the district between 
Farnham and Alton, and at the same time both in Kent 
and Herefordshire ; and afterwards, when the price reco- 
vered, some of the finest pasture land in the world was 
ploughed up to make hop-yards, which have not yet paid 
even the tithe. There is, however, a blight whose ravages 
are without any proportionate good, or any good at all that 
I am aware of : a thief that robs our sheep and our cows 
of their winter food, and often compels their owners to 
starve them to skin and bone, thereby causing murrain 
and all manner of disease to the kine, empty pockets to 
