Agricultural Notes

Abstract

IN the recently published number of the Journal of the South-eastern Agricultural College, Wye, Mr. Theobald wiv account of some injurious flea-beetles (Halticae) which he has recently studied. He finds that the damage ascribed to the turnip “fly ”(Phyllotreta nemorum) is vefy of tendue to related genera. A troublesome attack of the at the College farm drew attention to a new culprit Haltica oleracea, and in observations made in Yorkshire' Cambridge, Huntingdon, Surrey, Kent and Devon this species was found to be much more destructive than P nemorum. The characteristics of five injurious genera are described, and observers are asked to collect and report upon these very destructive insects. Mr. Theobald's experience leads him to remark that “The present economic entomologist relies on the past economic entomologist and so errors go on until they really seem facts. . . John Curtis wrote the most excellent article on the turnip flea that can be imagined, and we have all copied it."Mr Iheobald's request for “serious reporting and collecting'” should appeal to a wider circle than is reached by the College Journal. The entomologist is not the only worker who relies on the achievements of the past, nor is economic entomology the only branch of applied science that may learn something from this study of the Haltica—