190 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



damage to the crop. — From this maggot (for a supply of 

 onions containing which I have to thank my friend Mr. 

 Campbell, surgeon, of Hedon near Hull, where it is 

 very injurious, particularly in light soils,) I have suc- 

 ceeded in breeding tne fly, which proves of that tribe of 

 the Linnean genus Miisca, now called Scatophaga. Be- 

 in o- apparently undescribed, and new to my valued cor- 

 respondent Count Hofhnansegg to whom I sent it, I call 

 it S. Ceparum*. — The diuretic Asparagus, towards the 

 close of the season, is sometimes rendered unpalatable 

 by the numerous eggs of Lema Asparagi, F., and its 

 larvae feed upon the foliage after the heads branch out. 

 — Cucumbers with us enjoy an immunity from insect 

 assailants ; but in America they are deprived of this pri- 

 vilege, an unascertained species, called there the cucum- 

 ber-fly, doing them great injury 15 . — And, to name no 

 more, mushrooms, which are frequently cultivated and 

 much in request, often swarm with the maggots of various 

 Diptera and Coleoptera. 



The insects just enumerated are partial in their at- 

 tacks, confining themselves to one or two kinds of our 

 pulse or other vegetables. But there are others that 

 devour more indiscriminately the produce of our gar- 

 dens ; and of these in certain seasons and countries we 

 have no greater and more universal enemy than the ca- 

 terpillar of a moth called by entomologists Noctua Gam- 

 ma, from its having a character inscribed in gold on its 



a Description of S. Ceparum. — Cinereous, clothed with distant 

 black hairs, proceeding, particularly on the thorax, from a black point. 

 Legs nigrescent. Back of the abdomen of the male with an inter- 

 rupted black vitta down the middle. Wings immaculate. Poisers 

 and alulae pale yellow. Length 3^ lines. 



b Barton in Pkilos, Magaz. ix. 62. 



