OF SELBOENE. 107 



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 mantlepieces 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 " Clirysomela 

 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. 1 



There is an CEstrus t known in these parts to every plough- 

 boy ; which, because it is omitted by Linnaeus, is also passed 

 over by late writers, and that is the curvicauda of old 

 Mouflet, mentioned by Derham in his " Physico-Theology," 

 p. 250, an insect worthy of remark for depositing its eggs 

 as it flies in so dexterous a manner on the single hairs of 

 the legs and flanks of grass horses. 2 But then Derham is 



1 On the subject of the Turnip-fly the reader may be referred to the 

 " Letters of Rusticus," pp. 91-108, and to an excellent account pub- 

 lished by Mr. Edward Newman in the " Field" of Nov. 20, 1869. 



Against the attacks of the black caterpillar, or " black dolphin," as 

 White terms it, no preventive has yet been suggested. The most 

 effectual means of keeping it under is by freely sprinkling the infested 

 fields with lime, and renewing the sprinkling as often as the fine powder 

 may happen to be carried a\vay by the wind. The same process 

 appears also to have been the most successful that has yet been resorted 

 to against the attacks of the ordinary turnip-fly. It is strongly recom- 

 mended in a report which was published in 1834 by the Doncaster 

 Agricultural Society, as the result of a very extensive correspondence, 

 instituted with the especial view of collecting, from all parts of England, 

 information on a subject of so much importance to the agriculturist. 

 ED. 



2 Gilbert White was mistaken in supposing that Linnaeus had over- 

 looked this insect. He described it both in the " Fauna Suecica " and 

 in his " Systema," under the name of CEstrus bovis, but the habitats 

 which he assigned to it, namely, the stomach of the horse and the back 

 of kine, show that he confounded together two distinct insects, the 

 maggots of which infest the several situations referred to by him. The 

 maggots of the one, known by the names of wormals or warbles, and 



