60 
MUSTARD. 
“ They shelter in the crevices of gate-posts, farm-buildings, &c., in 
the rough grass which grows on the edges of marsh-ditches, and in 
haulm walls, whether made of Mustard or any other straw. I found a 
great many last winter in the root-ends of the Mustard-stubble, a good 
part of which is left on the land when the crop is cleared, and may be 
found lying on the top all the following winter in the young Wheat. 
I have found as many as twelve beetles in one of these roots ; they 
seem quite indifferent to frost, for, though when you open the stalk 
they seem dead, they soon begin to move. Many in these stalks, lying 
on the top of the land, must have been exposed to all the frosts of last 
winter.” —Ernest Smith. 
“ I have found them in drain-banks, when digging during the 
sharp frost; also in crevices or cracks in a gate-post.” — Eichard H. 
Sears. 
“ If the spring is warm they generally come in the beginning of 
May, or rather beetles then begin to attack the Mustard-plant, but 
probably not the Plmdon hetula. There are several kinds of insects 
which do great injury to Mustard during the different stages of its 
growth, up to the time it gets mto flower. After the flowering-time 
the ravages of the Plmdon hetulcB are become more perceptible. 
There is a difference of opinion as to how and where they pass the 
winter. They have been found between the bark and wood of old de¬ 
cayed trees, in the cracks of gates, posts, and rails, in dyke-banks, 
hedge-bottoms, among reeds, in heaps of rubbish, stalks, &c., when 
left on the land,—in anything that will hide them warm and dry. A 
correspondent writes he has found them in all the above places, and 
has seen them out when the sun has been warm in winter.” —Samuel 
Egan. 
“ I think the majority are to be found in the earth at the bottom of 
the hedgerows surrounding the fleld in which a crop of Brown Mustard 
has been grown.”— Wm. Abbott. 
“ I believe these beetles during the winter months get in any 
reeds by the side of ditches, but what they feed on until spring I 
cannot say; but at the spring you may find them on any kind of 
Charlock or pieces of Mustard that are growing anywhere about.”— 
John Tibbetts. 
“ This insect will live through the most severe winter in the pipe 
of the reeds and rushes in ditches and drains. Two or three years 
since they were so numerous that many acres of nearly-ripe seed were 
burnt in the fields to destroy the beetle, but this was not effective, as 
they drop before the flame and bury themselves in the soil.”—C. 
Caswell, Peterborough, 1883. 
“In the ends of old stocks which are left on the land after the 
stocks are raked up and burnt; also on the ditch-banks in the long 
