The Natural History of Selborne 129 



where these insects swarm sometimes to so infinite a degree 

 as to discolour their nets, and to give them a reddish cast, 

 while the men are so bitten as to be thrown into fevers. 



There is a small long shining fly in these parts very trouble- 

 some 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 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 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, sanatoria, 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 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 chamceleon ; see Geoffrey, 

 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 



1 White is here mistaken. ED. 



