94 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
genus of Acarus. They are to be met with in gardens on kidney- 
beans, or any legumens, but prevail only in the hot months of 
summer. Warreners, as some have assured me, are much infested 
by them on chalky downs; where these insects swarm sometimes 
to so infinite a degree as to discolour their nets, and to give them a 
reddish cast, while the men are so bitten as to be thrown into 
fevers. 
There is a small long shining fly in these parts very troublesome 
to the housewife, by getting into the chimneys, and laying its eggs 
in the bacon while it is drying ; these eggs produce maggots 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 Linnzeus ; it is to be 
seen in the summer in farm-kitchens on the bacon-racks and about 
the mantelpieces, and on the ceilings. 
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 crassissimts.”’ In very hot summers they abound to an 
amazing degree, and, as you walk in a field or in a garden, make a 
pattering like rain, by jumping on the leaves of the turnips or 
cabbages. 
There is an oestrus, known in these parts to every ploughboy ; 
which, because it is omitted by Linnzeus, is also passed over by late 
writers ; and that is the curvicauda of old Mouset, mentioned by 
Derham in his “ Physico-Theology,” p. 250; an insect worthy of 
remark for depositing its eggs as it flies in so dextrous a manner on 
the single hairs of the legs and flanks of grass-horses. But then 
Derham is mistaken when he advances that this oestrus is the 
parent of that wonderful star-tailed maggot which he mentions 
afterwards; for more modern entomologists have discovered that 
singular production to be derived from the egg of the susca 
chameleon ; see Geoffroy, t. xvii. f. 4. 
A full history of noxious insects hurtful in the field, garden, and 
house, suggesting all the known and likely means of destroying them, 
would be allowed by the public to be a most useful and important 
work. What knowledge there is of this sort lies scattered, and 
wants to be collected; great improvements would soon follow 
of course. A knowledge of the properties, economy, propagation, 
