114 MAGGOTS. 



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, saltatoria, femoribus posticis crassissimis.* In very 



* The hatica nemorum of Illiger, and the root weevil (nedigus 

 contractus^) of Stephens, are both formidable depredators, in turnip and 

 other crops. The former of these is that probably meant by White. The 

 caterpillar of another species of the genus athalia, is no less destructive. 

 Marshall records an instance, in the Philosophical Transactions, of 

 many thousand acres, which had to be ploughed up, in consequence of the 

 devastations caused by these insects. The Norfolk farmers think they 

 come from beyond the sea, and one even averred, that he saw them arrive 

 in clouds, so as to darken the air; while the fishermen reported, that they 

 had repeatedly witnessed flights of them pass over their heads, when they 

 were at a distance from the shore. So numerous were they upon the 

 beach and cliffs, and lay in such heaps, that they might have been taken 

 up with shovels. Three miles inland, they were found congregated like 

 swarms of bees. 



The maggots or larvae of the blow-flies are an equally destructive race 

 to animal matter. Linnaeus says, the musca vomitaria will devour the 

 carcass of a horse as quickly as a lion would do. And this is not at all 

 improbable, when we know, that a species nearly allied to this (the musca 

 carnaria) produces not fewer than twenty thousand at a time ; and that 

 they have been proved by Redi to increase in weight two hundred fold 

 within the short space of twenty-four hours. One of the most extraor- 

 dinary circumstances connected with the destructive powers of maggots, 

 and of their attacking the human frame, is recorded in Bell's Weekly 

 Messenger. " On the 25th June, 1829, died at Asbornby, Lincoln- 

 shire, John Page, a pauper, belonging to Little Willoughby, under 

 circumstances truly singular. He being of a restless disposition, and 

 not choosing to stay in the parish workhouse, was in the habit of strolling 

 about the neighbouring villages, subsisting on the pittance obtained from 

 door to door ; the support he usually received from the benevolent was 

 bread and meat ; and after satisfying the cravings of nature, it was his 

 custom to deposit the surplus provisions, particularly the meat, betwixt 

 his shirt and skin. Having a considerable portion of this provision in 

 store, so deposited, he was taken rather unwell, and laid himself down in 

 a field, in the parish of Scredington ; when, from the heat of the season 

 at that time, the meat speedily became putrid, and was of course struck 

 by the flies : these not only proceeded to devour the inanimate pieces 

 of flesh, but also literally to prey upon the living substance ; and when 

 the wretched man was accidentally found by some of the inhabitants, 



