NIGGER. 
99 
tenfold the labour of the few women required to weed : 
the weeds themselves would be the only fuel required, and 
five shillings' worth of sulphur would be enough for a good 
sized farm. Another fact, which to me is very obvious, 
although most farmers deny it, is, that swedes are much 
less injured by the fly than any other variety of turnip 
whatsoever, so that I would recommend the cultivation of 
this plant where practicable in preference to any other. 
One more partial remedy is worthy of notice : the turnip- 
beetle has a great antipathy to the taste of salt, and if the 
leaves are watered with a weak solution of salt in water I 
have found them quite untouched. Great benefit also fol- 
lows the steeping of the seed in weak brine ; this I once 
proposed in the belief that the eggs of the parent beetle 
were laid on the seed, an error I immediately afterwards 
detected and publicly renounced : the egg I found laid on 
the leaf itself. 
A second, but still more dreaded plague of the turnip 
crop is the Nigger : happily, however, its visits are few 
and far between. This year [1835] all our turnips are 
infested with these niggers. They are the caterpillars 
of a fly that ought really to be called the turnip-fly, a 
name which we have seen is universally given to the tur- 
nip-beetle. About the middle of July these real turnip- 
flies were showered down on us as it were from the clouds; 
they fell thicker than rain-drops, and hovered about the 
turnips in such myriads that whole fields were coloured 
with a rainbowy tinge when the hot sun shone on their 
filmy wings. I will give an entomological description of 
one of these flies : the head and antennae are coal-black ; 
the thorax is yellow before and on the top, but coal-black 
on the sides and behind ; the body is yellow ; the wings 
h2 
