TURNIP-FLY. 95 



would not, I fancy, be of much use : but I one day was 

 cogitating on the matter, and argued to myself thus : it 

 would be a difficult task to catch and kill twenty thousand 

 fleas if shut up in a room with them ; but it might not be 

 quite so difficult to prevent twenty thousand fleas coming 

 into a room where there were none previously ; and the 

 wisest way seemed to me to find out how they could come 

 there. Now, as all straight -forward inquiries of this kind 

 are laughed at, and at once yclept theories, I kept all my 

 operations to myself, and now, for the first time, offer them 

 to the public. I am very sorry to say they are yet incom- 

 plete, but still they will be found of some use to those who 

 are disposed to pursue the subject. 



After I had made the acquaintance of these fellows so 

 thoroughly that I knew them whenever I met them, I 

 amused myself by sweeping the hedge-rows with a gauze 

 net fixed on an iron hoop, and this hoop screwed to the 

 top of a stout walking-stick. These hedge-rows require a 

 word or two : they are generally huge embankments 

 thrown up like the fortifications of the ancient Britons, and 

 on one side there is commonly a deep trench, making the 

 simile still more complete : on the top are antiquated spe- 

 cimens of hazel, oak, maple and whitethorn, occasionally 

 chopped down to hedge measurement; and high above 

 these a consumptive elm may here and there be seen rear- 

 ing its naked and ugly stem. The sides or banks of these 



escaping unobserved, that the earth became mouldy, and they were all de- 

 stroyed ; but I have a great many specimens of the beetle produced from larva 

 which I fed and placed in a garden pot enclosed in a cage of fine wire gauze, 

 but they being introduced at various times as they became full fed, I could 

 not ascertain the precise time of any individual specimen. Trans, of Ent. Soc. 

 of London, ii. 24. 



