circulation till the plant sickens and dies. c I have sometimes/ says Colonel Sleeman, ‘ seen the air tinted of 
an orange colour for many days by the quantity of these seeds which it has contained, and that without 
the wheat-crops suffering at all, when any but an easterly wind has prevailed; but when the air is so charged 
with this farina, let but an easterly wind blow for twenty-four hours, and all the wheat-crops under its in- 
fluence are destroyed — nothing can save them ! The stalks and leaves become first of an orange colour, 
from the light colour of the farina which adheres to them ; but this changes to deep brown. All that part 
of the stalk that is exposed seems as if it had been pricked with needles, and had exuded blood from every 
puncture ; and the grain in the ear withers in proportion to the number of fungi that intercept and feed upon 
its sap; but the parts of the stalk that are covered by the leaves remain entirely uninjured; and when the 
leaves are drawn off from them, they form a beautiful contrast to the others which have been exposed to the 
depredations of these parasitic plants. Every pore, it is said, may contain from twenty to forty of these 
plants, and each plant may shed a hundred seeds, so that a single shrub, infected with the disease, may 
disseminate it over the face of a whole district; for in the warm month of March, when the wheat is attain- 
ing maturity, these plants ripen and shed their seeds in a week; and consequently increase with enormous 
rapidity, when they find plants with their pores open ready to receive and nourish them . 5 Colonel Sleeman 
adds that he had seen rich fields of uninterrupted wheat cultivation, extending over an area of twenty miles 
by ten, in the Valley of the Nerbudda, so completely destroyed by this kind of blight, that even the stalks 
and leaves were considered unfit for fodder. 
In England, the disease which is caused or increased by webs and soft insects is popularly called a blight 
while that in which snails and hard insects are the proximate evil-doers is a c sneg . 5 The former comes in 
a warm south-east wind, and the latter in a cold north-east wind — both of which vehicles, according to a 
very amusing volume before us, have about as much to do with the vegetable disease as with a rise in the 
funds. The volume has a good deal of the air and character of the famous ‘ Natural History of Selbourne ; 
and, together with other instructive and entertaining matter, it contains a great variety of information re- 
specting the various insects whose depredations are set down as the real blight in plants. 
The gooseberry-fly, which collects such heavy tithes of one of the wholesomest of our fruits, is a pretty 
and merry insect, which spends its brief life in sporting with its companions in the sunshine. Marriage, 
however, spoils his amusement and injures his morals; for his progeny are deposited where they have no 
business, the eggs dotting the back of the leaves, at regular intervals, like bead-work. In about a week the 
grubs come forth head foremost, leaving the skins of the eggs standing ‘like a row of empty silver purses/ 
and straightway they begin eating ; and this with such effect, that their first meal changes their smoke- 
coloured vest into 
‘A doublet of the Lincoln green.’ 
There are sixty or seventy of these devourers on one leaf : and as each grub will eat three leaves to his own 
share before he is satisfied, by destroying one leaf in proportion you save a couple of hundreds. If let alone 
however the grub goes on eat — eat — eating, without a moment’s intermission, till he is about half an inch 
in length: here he pauses, apparently for want of skin-room. His black head separates like a mask from 
the neck, and splits down the middle, and a new head pops out of the opening, with which he looks 
about him, moving it slowly on all sides, and without any vulgar expression of surprise or other excitement. 
Being satisfied as to the locality, he next wriggles out his body; and having at length got fairly rid of the 
insufficient skin, he sets to work to fill the new one, eating without intermission for four or five days more. 
At the end of this time he casts his skin again, and comes forth of a pale, delicate, green colour. He eats 
no more. He descends to the earth, and burrowing in it like a mole, to a depth of from two to eight inches, 
he makes a little oblong cell, and surrounding himself with a tough black cocoon, awaits tranquilly his 
transformation into a chrysalis, and soon after into a fly. When the eggs are laid before the middle of 
May, the whole of this history, down to the appearance of the fly, comes within a space of about twenty- 
eight days; but when the eggs are late in the year, our grub does not think it worth his while to come 
forth from his subterranean abode, but dozes comfortably in his cocoon till the ensuing spring. If any 
gardener is so inhospitable as to desire to save his gooseberries from this amusing visitor, the best way 
would appear to be to beat down and harden the soil all round the plants, so as to convert his temporary 
retirement into a perpetual imprisonment.’ 
