OF SELBOBNE. 
283 
To tMs account I think proper to add, that, although the 
female Cocci are stationary, and seldom remove from the 
place to which they stick, yet the male is a winged insect ; 
and that the black dust which I saw was undoubtedly the 
excrement of the females, which is eaten by ants as well as 
flies. Though the utmost severity of our winter did not 
destroy these insects, yet the attention of the gardener in a 
summer or two has entirely relieved my vine from this filthy 
annoyance/ 
As we have remarked above, that insects are often con- 
veyed from one country to another in a very unaccountable 
manner, I shall here mention an emigration of small Aphides , 
which was observed in the village of Selborne no longer 
ago than August the 1st, 1785. 
At about three o'clock in the afternoon of that day, 
which was very hot, the people of this village were sur- 
prised by a shower of Aphides, or smother-flies, which fell 
in these parts. Those that were walking in the street at 
that juncture found themselves covered with these insects, 
which settled also on the hedges and gardens, blackening 
all the vegetables where they alighted. My annuals were 
discoloured with them, and the stalks of a bed of onions 
were quite coated over for six days after. These armies 
were then, no doubt, in a state of emigration, and shifting 
their quarters ; and might have come, as far as we know, 
from the great hop-plantations of Kent or Sussex, the wind 
being all that day in the easterly quarter. They were ob- 
served at the same time in great clouds about Farnham, and 
all along the vale from Farnham to Alton. ^ 
^ It is not usual, as Mr. Bennett has remarked, for the Coccus of the 
vine to remain attached for several years in succession to a tree in the 
open air in England, for the severity of the winter generally destroys it 
at an early period. But to plants in greenhouses it often proves a 
serious evil. It can scarcely be regarded as an indigenous insect, and 
has probably been introduced into this country, from time to time, with 
exotic plants. — Ed. 
^ For various methods by which several insects shift their quarters, 
Derham's Physico-Theology. — G. W. 
