NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 77 



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 "ckrysomcla oleracea, sanatoria, 

 femoribus posticis crass is simis" 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 Mouset, 

 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 ad- 

 vances 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 cham&leon; see Geoff roy, 

 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 de- 

 stroying them, would be allowed by the public to be a most use- 

 ful 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, and in short of the life and conversa- 

 tion of these animals is a necessary step to lead us to some 

 method of preventing their depredations. 



As far as I am a judge, nothing would recommend ento- 

 mology more than some neat plates that should well express 

 the generic distinctions of insects according to Linnaeus ; for 

 I am well assured that many people would study insects, could 

 they set out with a more adequate notion of those distinctions 

 than can be conveyed at first by words alone. 



