2 JULY 1948, Page 20

In the Garden

Lately, as often before, accounts have been published of the wholesale destruction of lettuces that had become unsaleable. The consumption of this excellent plant would, I hold, be much increased, to the general benefit, if it were more widely used as a cooked vegetable. It is delicious and wholesome, much superior in my judgement to any of the spinaches, and it can be used when rather too antique for a good salad. Straw- berries are a good crop, but I hear from the north-west that they are being devoured by a brown-black beetle rather smaller and less iridescent than the click-beetle, which also abounds. The plague has not been identified. Can any entomologist help ? W. BRACH 'THOMAS.