146 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 



I shall make a point of meeting you in town. It is 

 time now to have a little conversation face to face after 

 we have corresponded so freely for several years.] 1 



There is an insect 2 with us, especially on chalky 

 districts, which is very troublesome and teasing all the 

 latter end of the summer, getting into people's skins, 

 especially those of women and children, and raising 

 tumours which itch intolerably. This animal (which we 

 call an harvest bug) is very minute, scarce discernible to 

 the naked eye ; of a bright scarlet colour, and of the 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 dis- 

 colour 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 musca putris of Linnceus : it is to be seen in 

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

 the mantle-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, saltatoria, femoribus posticis crasstssimis." In very 

 hot summers they abound to an amazing degree, and, 

 as you walk in a field or in a garden, make a pattering 



1 From this it would seem that Gilbert White and Pennant had not yet met. 



2 Some interesting notes by my friend Mr. R. J. Pocock on the insects here 

 mentioned arrived too late for insertion here, and will be found in an appendix to 

 the present volume. [R. B. S.] 



