This fly I
suspect to be a variety of the musca putris of Linnaeus: it is to be
seen in the summer in the farm-kitchens on the bacon-racks and
about the mantelpieces, 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
coleoptera; the 'chrysomela oleracea, saltatoria, femoribus posficis
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 oestrus, 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.
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