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n II 



T H E F L Y - W E E V I L. 



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I cannot readily agreti with him here; for certainly as the 

 fly got to the car before, it is reafonable to think it could, 

 after faUing off, crawl up again, unlcfs the fall could be 

 fuppofcd to crufh fo fmall an animal as a pin head. There-: 

 fore I was perfuadcd, unlefs the difturbance of ;-ope-haul- 

 ing was conftantly given, the fly would return again fo 

 often, as to make it a tedious work of many days, at leaft 

 every morning and evening, from the caRing of the bloom, 

 to the hardening of the grain. I have fnice fancied^ that 

 by the fame author's method of fumigatitig turnips, juft 

 come up, in his 3d. vol. page 348, with orpiment, every here 

 and there, thrown about on live coals, to windward of a 

 wheat field, in a gently moving air, the prodigious thick 

 foggy fmoke railed by that drug, might kill the moth-fly, 

 as he fays it will do the turnip-fly, without injuring the 

 turnips, even in vegetation. I fay, I imagined the doing 



this pretty often in the wheat field might be of fervice; for 

 though orpiment is of an arfenical nature, as I found it fo 

 flrongly recommended, and have alfo read, that though 

 poifonous, it had been fuccefsfully prefcribed to be worn 

 round children's necks, as a deftroycr of worms; I at firft 

 thought that might do: Yet as fire often renders thing 

 eally lafe and innocent when crude) very noxious, there 



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might be a poffibility of danger in it; and reading of many 

 bad fymptoms occafioned by it to the fhotcafters, who ufe 



it to increafe the fluidity of their lead, that it may run 

 quicker or more certainly into gU)bules, I could not think 

 (upon better reafoning) to make ufe of fuch an experiment. 

 My end in all this enquiry, was to prevent the deftruc- 

 tion made in wheat, by dcftroying this infed: in its egg; 

 and I imagined I had foundation enough to conduct me to 

 that pointy from the accounts given of hatching in Egypt, 

 and what we may collect with certainty from DuRccmmer^s 

 elaborate treatife upon raifing fowls; befides many little 

 family obfervations, that correfpondcd with the common 

 fenfe of things. Experience Ihews, that a fowl greafed 

 (as they fometluics are under the wings to kill the lice) 



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