114 NATURAL HISTORY 
called jumpers, which, harbouring in the gammons 
and best parts of the hogs, eat down to the bone 
and make great waste. ‘This fly I suspect to be a 
variety of the musca putris of Linnzus. It is to be 
seen in the summer in farm kitchens, on the bacon- 
racks, and about the mantelpieces, and on the ceil- 
ings. 
The insect that infests turnips, and many crops 
in the garden (destroying often whole fields while 
in their seedling leaves), is an animal that wants to 
be better known. The country people here call it 
the turnip-fly and black dolphin; but I know it to 
be one of the coleoptera, the “ chrysomela oleracea, 
saltatoria, femoribus posticis crassissimis.” In very 
hot summers they abound to an amazing degree, 
and, as you walk in the field or in a garden, make 
a pattering like rain by jumping on the leaves of 
the turnips or cabbages. 
There is an cestrus known in these parts to every 
ploughboy, which, because it is omitted by Lin- 
néus, is also passed over by late writers ; and that 
is the curvicauda of old Moufet, mentioned by Der- 
ham in his Physico-Theology, p. 250: an insect 
worthy of remark, for depositing its eggs as it flies 
in so dexterous a manner on the single hairs of the 
legs and flanks of grass-horses. But then Derham 
is mistaken when he advances that this estrus is 
the parent of that wonderful star-tailed maggot 
which he mentions afterward, for more modern en- 
tomologists have discovered that singular produc- 
tion to be derived from the egg of the musca cha- 
maleon.—See Geoffroy, t.17,f.4. 
A full history of noxious insects, hurtful i 
field, garden, and house, suggesting all the known 
