92 
TURNIP-FLY. 
themselves, and a host of accompanying evils ; and this thief 
is a little, glossy, tiny, skipping, hopping, meny-andrew 
kind of a beetle, in common parlance known by a name 
the very mention of which elongates a farmer's counte- 
nance at least an inch and a half — the Turnip-Fly. 
The turnip-fly is not always of one kind, but the diffe- 
rence between them is not important, they only alter in 
their colour, their shape is always alike : the most com- 
mon is coloured bottle-green ; but in some fields all are 
black, with a whitish line or stripe from stem to stern on 
each side down the back;* they are so active, that the only 
way I could ever obtain them in the newly-sown fields was 
by sweeping the surface with a gauze net on an iron hoop 
at the end of a strongish stick ; they jump like fleas di- 
rectly they see you. These beetles begin their attack on 
the turnip directly it is up, devouring the two cotyledons 
and the little heart, and sometimes, in a few days leaving 
the field as brown as the day it was sowed.f 
* The striped beetle, Altica nemorum, is properly the turnip-fly : the green 
one is A. Brassicse. — E. N. 
f To Mr. Le Keux is due the credit of discovering (or at any rate of pub- 
lishing an account of) the economy of the turnip-beetle. " Having witnessed 
the destructive effects of the turnip-fly in the year 1830, whilst lodging at a 
farm-house in Devonshire, I was led to observe its habits, and to try many ex- 
periments, in the hope of being able to find some means of guarding against 
its attacks. My first observations were made upon a field of about eight acres, 
forming the apex of a hill, which was sown with turnips. When the young 
plants were just rising above the ground, the wind was in the south-east, and 
continued to blow from that point for more than a week, carrying in its course 
the scent of the turnips over the fields lying to the north-west, and the turnips 
on the north-west side of the field were so destroyed by the fly that nearly an 
acre was quite bare, whilst the south-east side was not attacked in any percep- 
tible degree until after the plants had attained to such a size as not to be much 
injured by their depredations. This circumstance led me to conclude that the 
fly had been attracted by the scent, which subsequent observations have con- 
firmed. When I became familiar with the form and character of the insect, I 
