74 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



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, 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 wheu 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, or the musca chamceleon ; 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 know- 

 ledge of the properties, economy, propagation, and in short of the life 

 and conversation of these animals, is a necessary step to lead us to some 

 method of preventing their depredations.* 



* Many good papers have been published upon the insects injurious to the 

 husbandman and gardener, and the Messrs. Loudon and Westwood, have trans- 

 lated Roller's German treatise upon " Noxious Insects." The harvest-bug as it 

 is popularly termed, leptus autumnalis, Latreille, is generally very abundant 

 where it does occur, and is extremely troublesome ; it is, however, local, most 

 abundant in the south, and in Scotland by no means frequent ; it attacks both 

 mankind and animals ; we have seen the nose of a dog literally red with their 

 numbers. The fly attacking bacon-hams Mr. Benuet refers as similar to that 

 which infests cheese, tyrophaga casece, but of this I am not quite sure, and 

 recommend some of our readers who may keep hams up their chimneys to send 

 specimens to the "Gardener's Chronicle," who will submit them to their able 

 entomologist Mr. "Westwood. The insect most usually known as the ' ' turnip-fly " 

 is, as Mr. White observes, a small beetle, haltica nemorum, by some called flea- 

 beetle, from being an active jumper. This minute insect commits most serious 

 depredations to the crops when in the seed-leaf, and some seasons a vast extent is 

 destroyed. This present year, 1853, in the south of Scotland, it has been extremely 

 destructive, and a very great breadth of crop has been sown a second time. The 

 insect is very generally distributed, and I have never missed finding it among a 

 young crop, but its depredations are most successful when dry weather or 

 any other cause prevents the young plant from growing freely and vigorously. 

 The best remedy, therefore, is to have the land well managed and in good 

 condition from manure ; in most seasons this will have the effect of producing the 

 young plants strong and healthy, and causing them to grow so rapidly as to be 

 very soon beyond the ravages of the fly. A clergyman at Dorste, in Hanover, 



