94 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



genus of Acarus. They are to be met with in gardens on kidney- 

 beans, or any legumens, but prevail only in the hot months of 

 summer. Warreners, as some have assured me, are. much infested 

 by them on chalky downs ; 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 troublesome 

 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 nmsca putris of Linnseus ; it is to be 

 seen in the summer in farm-kitchens on the bacon-racks and about 

 the mantelpieces, 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 oltmcea, saltatoria, 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 ploughboy ; 

 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 dextrous 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 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 j see Geoffroy, 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 destroying them, 

 would be allowed by the public to be a most useful 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, 



