NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 87 



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 some- 

 times 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 Musca putris of Linnseus ; 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 poslicis 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 Linnseus, is 

 also passed over by late writers ; and that is the curvicauda 

 of old Mofuet, mentioned by Derham in his Physico- 

 Theology^ p. 250 ; an insect worthy of remark for depositing 



