OF SELBOllNE, 
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 Goleoptera ; the Ghrysomela 
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 CEstrus, known in these parts to every plough- 
boy 'y 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.^ But then Derham is 
^ On the subject of tlie 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 away 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 
