96 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
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 coleoptera ; the chrysomela oleracea, saltatoria, fe- 
morihus 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 ploughboy ; 
which, because it is omitted by Linnaeus, is also passed over by 
late writers ; and that is the curvicauda of old Moufet, 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 mistaken when he advances that this cestrus 
is the parent of that wonderful star-tailed maggot which he men- 
tions afterwards ; for more modern entomologists have discovered 
that singular production to be derived from the egg of the musca 
chamceleon.f See Geoffroy, t. 17, f. 4. 
A fall history of noxious insects hurtful in the field, garden, 
and house, suggesting all the known and likely means of destroy- 
mg them, would be allowed by the public to be a most useful 
and important work. AAHiat knowledge there is of this sort lies 
scattered, and wants to be collected ; great improvements would 
soon follow of course. A knowledge of the properties, economy, 
propagation, and in short the life and conversation of these ani- 
mals, is a necessary step to lead us to some method of preventing 
their depredations. 
As far as I am a judge, nothing would recommend entomology 
more than some neat plates that should well express the generic 
distinctions of insects according to Linnaeus ; for I am well 
* A species of halticat of which the H- nemorum is the most noted, though several of this ♦ 
extensive but minute genus are equally hurtful to the young turnip-plaut, devouring the cotyledon 
or seed-leaves immediatel}' on their appearance above ground, so that, in consequence of their 
ravages, the land is often obliged to be re-sown, and frequently with no better success. So ex- 
tensive is the mischief sometimes caused by these tiny insects alone, according to Arthur Young, 
the celebrated agriculturist, that, in the year 1776» the loss sustained by the turnip-growers of 
Devonshire amounted to full JE100,000 ; and yet, until very recently, from their minuteness and 
the obscurity of their habits, but little of the economy of these insects has been understood, 
though, as they are known only in the adult or beetle state upon the turnip-plant, it is obvious 
that they must have undergone their previous transformations elsewhere, whence half the remedies 
that have been proposed against their depredations, such as steeping of the seed (in the supposi- 
tion that the eggs were thereon laid), particular modes of sowing, and the like, are clearly of no 
a/aii, excepting in so far as they may tend to promote the growth of the plant, which is safe 
from the attacks of insects of this genus from the time it has put forth its rough leaves. — Eit 
t The larva of musca chameBleon, or, as it is now called, stratiomys chanuEleon, h wholly 
aquvitic.— Ed. 
