140 NOXIOUS INSECTS. 



the gammons and best part 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 slimmer in farm kitchens, on the bacon-racks, and about 

 the mantel-pieces and on the ceilings. 



The insect that infests turnips, and many crops in the 

 garden, (destroying often whole fields, while in their seed- 

 ling 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 crassissi- 

 mis" * "The cabbage chrysomela, moving by a leap, with 

 very thick hind-legs." 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 plough- 

 boy, which, because it is omitted by Linnaeus, is also passed 

 over by late writers ; and that is the curvicauda of old 

 Mouffet, mentioned by Derham 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 oestrus is the parent of 



* This is most probably the haltica nemorum, called by the farmers the Fly 

 and Black Jack, so well described by Messrs. Kirby and Spence, in their 

 admirable chapters on indirect injuries. It attacks and devours the first 

 Cotyledon leaves, as soon as they are unfolded ; so that, on account of their 

 ravages, the land is often obliged to be resown, and with no better success. 

 By these entomologists it is stated, on the authority of an eminent agriculturist, 

 that, from this cause alone, the loss sustained in the turnip crops in Devon- 

 shire, in 1786, was not less than 100,OOOZ. Great damage is also sometimes 

 done by the little curculio contractus, which, in the same manner, pierces a 

 hole in the cuticle. When the plant is more advanced, and out of danger 

 from these pigmy foes, the black larva of a saw-fly takes their place, and 

 occasionally does no little mischief, whole districts being sometimes stripped 

 by them, and, in 1783, many thousand acres were on this account ploughed 

 up. The caterpillar of papilio brassica is sometimes found in great numbers, 

 and the wire-worm also does occasionally great damage, both to turnips and 

 other vegetable and flower-roots. Mr. Kirby mentions a field in which one- 

 fourth was destroyed, and which the owner calculated at 100L One year, 

 the same person sowed a field three times with turnips, which were twice 

 wholly, and the third time a great part, cut off by this insect. W. J. 



