362 / INSECT Miscellanies. 



the sun, when the manure is laid upon the ^round^ 

 or by the warmth of the earth when it is ploughed in, 

 and make their first appearance in the shape of a 

 caterpillar, which may be observed jumping and 

 crawling on the land. The leaves of vegetables are 

 their choicest food, and in turnip land, though they 

 find nothing else, they find plenty of leaf, and on this 

 they feed to the absolute ruin of the root*." But had 

 this writer taken the trouble to confine these dung 

 maggots under a gauze cover till they were hatched, 

 he would have found, instead of the halticas, some 

 common two-winged flies, which a simple experiment 

 would have convinced him do not eat green leaves of 

 any kind, being incapable thereof for want of eating- 

 organs ; and our young naturalists who may wish to 

 try this will be enabled to prove to any farmer, who 

 is in fear of diffusing injurious insects by manure, 

 that no insects bred in dung ever touch a green leaf. 

 This remark brings us directly back to our subject 

 of instructing the student how to keep such insects 

 as he may find, in order to study their economy. In 

 the case of those just mentioned, which live in dung, 

 in decayed vegetables, or in earth, when they cannot 

 climb upon glass, we have found that open ale-glasses 

 or common tumblers filled with the materials among 

 which they are found, and kept in a due state of 

 moistness, constitute the best apparatus ; for even 

 when the animals dig down, their movements can 

 Vsually be observed through the sides of the glass. 

 In the case of the meal-worm, which lives upon flour, 

 the same expedient answers well, and the whole his- 

 tory of the insect may he read from day to day by 

 simple inspection. We are well aware that it is not 

 common in these collecting days of ours, to take the 

 trouble of breeding any insects besides moths and 

 butterflies j but our design being not to procure, spe** 

 * Treatise on Agriculturet 



