12i 
THE NATURAL HISTORY 
[LETT. 
My musical friend, at whose house I am now visiting, has 
tried all the owls that are his near neighbours with a pitch-pipe 
set at concert-pitch, and finds they all hoot in B flat. He will 
examine the nightingales next spring. 
Fyfield, ?iear Andover, Feb. 12, 1771. 
LETTER XLIIL 
TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 
There is an insect with us, especially on chalky districts, 
which is very troublesome and teasing all the latter end of the 
summer, getting into people's skins, especially those of women 
and children, and raising tumours which itch intolerably. This 
animal (which we call a harvest bug) is 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 
kidneybeans, 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 
sometimes swarm 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 trouble- 
some 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 
Leptus autumnalis of Latreille. 
