TURNIP-GALL WEEVIL. 
89 
ground to the reappearance in complete development as the perfect 
weevil was, in the observations which I took in the middle of summer, 
never less than fifty-four days, and never more than the space of two 
months. I did not find that there was any difference between the 
weevils raised from maggots taken from Turnip or from Cabbage galls, 
and the maggots also were alike, excepting that the Turnip maggot 
was rather more ochreous than the other."' 
WJien the galls are established on either Turnip or Cabbage there 
does not appear to be any remedy which can be brought to bear on 
the mischief that is then going on. Partridges are said to be very 
fond of the maggots, and to frequent Turnip fields for the purpose of 
pecking them with their bills out of the galls; but (as one great part 
of the damage of the attack consists in the escape of the maggot 
causing holes by which wet and injurious insects make their way into 
the Turnip) the still larger openings down into the gall-cavity caused 
by the birds’ beaks are a doubtful benefit. 
Good dressings of chalk and lime are stated to be good preventives, 
and so likewise is gas-lime. Anything that is injurious to the maggot, 
and which can be mixed in the earth into which it creeps from the 
gall to build up its earth-cocoon, must necessarily be brought strongly 
to bear upon its system, if not poison it outright. The maggots build 
up their cocoons by taking small fragments in their jaws, and adding 
them by means of a kind of gummy secretion from the mouth to the 
forming case, and if there is a supply in the soil of what is bad for 
them, and which will be partially swallowed in the house-building 
process, it cannot fail to be a preventive of increase. They have 
been recorded as going down out of the way of such annoyance deeper 
than the natural position for their change, and anything that places an 
insect when going through its changes in unnatural circumstances is 
very bad for it. 
In garden cultivation the chief preventive is fresh deeply-dug soil, 
and to avoid ground on which Turnips or Cabbage have previously 
been grown. 
* Maggots taken from Swede-turnips were of a still yellower tint, and those I 
observed differed in the small outside third tooth of the jaw, which was present in 
the Turnip and Cabbage-gall maggots, being absent; so that the jaws of the Swede 
weevil-maggot had only two teeth. I did not succeed in rearing the weevils from 
these, so cannot say whether they were precisely the same species. 
