TURNIP-FLY. 
97 
dred other kinds of all sorts and sizes, set out on their 
foraging excursions. The air is filled with them : if you 
ride outside a coach, they are eternally knocking against 
your physiognomy : if you work in your garden, you hear 
them rattling, like a gentle shower of rain, on the lights of 
your cucumher-frame : no earthly power can keep these 
little miscreants from roving on a bright summer day. 
Then comes another fact: all insects are gifted with a 
wonderful sense of smell — vast power in the olfactories : it 
may be presumed that the odoriferous particles borne on 
the wings of Zephyr from a field of delicately young tur- 
nips, their very favourite food, would be most attractive to 
them ; and such is the case : the fine weather tempts them 
to leave the preserve, the scent of the turnips lures them to 
the fields, leads them by the nose, and you may see them 
descending during the hours of sunshine, in a gentle, con- 
tinuous and disastrous shower. The work of destruction 
is brief, but complete ; like locusts they clear the ground 
as they proceed ; beginning on the lee-side of a field they 
march forward, making destruction sure. I have seen 
three and four on a single seedling; each with his head bu- 
ried in the hole he has just begun to gnaw. If the spring 
has been fine and the weather at this period is dry, there 
is no hope for the crop : its fate is sealed : if, on the con- 
trary, the weather is wet, there is every chance of the 
crop being saved. The marauders cannot bear the wet, 
and the plants are too small to afford them shelter beneath 
the leaves, so they creep under ground, hiding beneath 
little lumps of earth, and there remain till all is dry again: 
meanwhile the turnip grows apace, sends out its rough 
leaves, gains strength and bulk hour after hour, and soon 
supplies more food than the beetles can consinne ; so that 
H 
