OF SELBORNE 79 



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 Linnaeus : it is to be seen 

 in the summer in the farm-kitchens on the bacon-racks and 

 about the mantelpieces, and on the ceiHngs. 



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 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 Linnaeus, is 

 also passed over by late writers, and that is the curvicauda 

 of old Moufet, 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 musca chamaeleon : see GeofFroy, t. 17, 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 know- 

 ledge there is of this sort lies scattered, and wants to be 

 collected ; great improvements would soon follow of 

 course. A knowledge of the properties, oeconomy, pro- 

 pagation, and in short of the life and conversation ot these 



