OF SELBORNE. 
that singular production to be derived from the egg of the 
Musca chamceleon :^ see Geoffroy, t. 17, f. 4. 
A full history of noxious insects hurtful in the field, 
garden, and house, suggesting all the known and likely 
means of destroying them, would be allowed by the public 
to be a most useful and important work.^ What knowledge 
there is of this sort lies scattered, and wants to be collected ; 
great improvements would soon follow of course. A know- 
ledge of the properties, economy, propagation, and in short, 
of the life and conversation of these animals, is a necessary 
step to lead us to some method of preventing their depre- 
dations. 
As far as I am a judge, nothing would recommend ento- 
mology more than some neat plates that should well express 
the generic distinctions of insects according to Linnaeus; 
itself in the stomack by means of the two hooks with which it is fur- 
nished at its smaller extremity ; its mode of growth ; its detachment, 
when fiilly grown, from the stomach ; its passage through the intestines 
to remain, during its pupa state, in some convenient spot of dung or 
earth ; some anatomical particulars respecting it ; and many other facts 
relating to the fly in its various stages, as well as to other species ; the reader 
is referred to the paper in the " Linnean Society's Transactions," from 
which the above extracts are taken. Interesting as they are, the ex- 
planation of them would extend this note to too great a length, and 
would carry it altogether away from the point to which it is chiefly 
directed, — the admirable provision adverted to in the text for securing 
for the bots the only habitation in which they could exist. — Ed. 
^ The singular larva of the Stratiomys chamceleon, De Geer, has been 
repeatedly figured and described ; and the use of the star-like circle of 
feathered hairs appended to its tail, as a means of suspending that part 
and the orifice of the respiratory tube in their centre, has been often 
explained : it is among the most beautiful as well as the most curious 
contrivances resorted to for such a purpose by ever-varying Nature. 
The eggs from which these larvas are produced are affixed by the parent 
fly to plants living in the water in which the development of the mag- 
got is to take place : those seen by Messrs. Kirby and Spence were 
" arranged like tiles on a roof, one laid partly over another, on the under 
side of the leaves of the water-plantain." — Ed. 
2 Since this observation was penned, the labours of Messrs. Kirby 
and Spence, Curtis, Newman, and others have gone far to supply the 
want alluded to, and have placed in the hands of students a store of 
most valuable and interesting facts on the subject of entomology. — Ed. 
