OF SELBORNE. 245 



" Reaumur *, I found this matter perfectly described and 

 " accounted for. Those husky shells, which I had observed, 

 " were no other than the female coccus, from whose sides this 

 " cotton-like substance exsudes, and serves as a covering and 

 " security for their eggs." 



To this account I think proper to add, that, though the 

 female cocci are stationary, and seldom remove from the place 

 to which they stick, yet the male is a winged insect ; and that 

 the black dust which I saw was undoubtedly the excrement of 

 the females, which is eaten by ants as w r ell as flies. Though 

 the utmost severity of our winter did not destroy these insects, 

 yet the attention of the gardener in a summer or two has 

 entirely relieved my vine from this filthy annoyance. 



As we have remarked above that insects are often conveyed 

 from one country to another in a very unaccountable manner, 

 I shall here mention an emigration of small aphides, which 

 was observed in the village of Selborne no longer ago than 

 August the 1st, 1785. 



At about three o'clock in the afternoon of that day, w r hich 

 was very hot, the people of this village were surprised by a 

 shower of aphides, or smother-flies, which fell in these parts. 

 Those that were walking in the street at that juncture found 

 themselves covered with these insects, which settled also on 

 the hedges and gardens, blackening all the vegetables where 

 they alighted. My annuals were discoloured with them, and 

 the stalks of a bed of onions were quite coated over for six 

 days after. These armies were then, no doubt, in a state of 

 emigration, and shifting their quarters ; and might have come, 

 as far as we know, from the great hop-plantations of Kent or 

 Sussex, the wind being all that day in the easterly quarter. 

 They were observed at the same time in great clouds about 

 Farnham, and all along the vale from Farnham to Alton* 



* [Reaum. l Hist, des Insectes,' vol. iv. tab. vi. figs. 5-7. See also 

 Kirby and Spence, vol. i. pp. 193-316, and vol. iii. p. 77 j Card. Chron. 

 1842, p. 840; and Johnson's Cott. Gard. Diet. 1863, p. 233, with a 

 woodcut from a drawing by Westwood. T. B.] 



a For various methods by which several insects shift their quarters, se 

 Derham's Physico-Theology. 



