HERE is an insect with us, especially on chalky districts, which is very troublesome and teasing all the latter end of the summer, getting into people's skins, especially those of women and children, and raising tumours which itch intolerably. This animal (which we call an harvest bug) is very minute, scarce discernible to the naked eye; of a bright scarlet colour, and of the genus of acarus.* They are to be met with in gardens on kidney beans, or any legumens; but prevail only in the hot months of summer. Warreners, as some have assured me, are much infested by them on chalky downs; where these insects sometimes swarm to so infinite a degree, as to discolour their nets, and to give them a reddish cast, while the men are so bitten as to be thrown into fevers.

There is a small long shining fly in these parts very troublesome to the housewife, by getting into the chimnies, and laying its eggs in the bacon while it is drying: these eggs produce maggots called

• Leptus Autumnalis of Latreille.

jumpers, which, harbouring in the gammons and best parts of the hogs, eat down to the bone, and make great waste. This fly I suspect to be a variety of the musca putris of Linnæus it is to be seen in the summer in farm-kitchens, on the bacon-racks and about the mantel-pieces, 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 posticis crassissimis”—“ the vaulting chrysomela, with the back part of the thighs very thick." 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 Linnæus,* 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 oestrus is t'e parent of that wonderful star-tailed maggot which he mentions afterwards; for more modern entomologists have discovered that singular production to be derived from the egg of the musca chameleon.+

This is a mistake on White's part: the Horse Bot-fly, Gasterophilus equi, Leach, is described by Linnæus under the name of astrus bovis.

t Stratiomys chamaleon, De Geer.

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 knowledge of the properties, œconomy, 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 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 Linnæus; for I am well assured that many people would study insects, could they set out with a more adequate notion of those distinctions than can be conveyed at first by words alone.

SELBORNE, March 30, 1771.

The excellent work of Kirby and Spence supplies the want which existed in White's time.-ED.

LETTER XLIV.

TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ.

APPENING to make a visit to my neighbour's peacocks, I could not help observing that the trains of those magnificent birds appear by no means to be their tails; those long feathers growing not from their uropygium, but all up their backs. A range of short brown stiff feathers, about six inches long, fixed in the uropygium, is the real tail, and serves as the fulcrum to prop the train, which is long and topheavy, when set an end. When the train is up, nothing appears of the bird before but its head and neck; but this would not be the case were those long feathers fixed only in the rump, as may be seen by the turkey-cock when in a strutting attitude. By a strong muscular vibration these birds can make the shafts of their long feathers clatter like the swords of a sword-dancer; they then trample very quick with their feet, and run backwards towards the females.

I should tell you that I have got an uncommon calculus @gogropila, taken out of the stomach of a fat ox; it is perfectly round, and about the size of a large Seville orange; such are, I think, usually flat. SELBORNE, 1771.

LETTER XLV.

TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON.

ROM what follows, it will appear that neither owls nor cuckoos keep to one note. My musical friend remarks that many (most) of his owls hoot in B flat; but that one went almost half a note below A. The pipe he tried their notes by was a common half-crown pitch-pipe, such as masters use for tuning of harpsichords; it was the common London pitch.

A neighbour of mine, who is said to have a nice ear, remarks that the owls about this village hoot in three different keys, in G flat, or F sharp, in B flat and A flat. He heard two hooting to each other, the one in A flat, and the other in B flat. Do these different notes proceed from different species, or only from various individuals? The same person finds `upon trial that the note of the cuckoo (of which we have but one species) varies in different individuals; for, about Selborne wood, he found they were mostly in D: he heard two sing together, the one in D, the other in D sharp, who made a disagreeable concert: he afterwards heard one in D sharp, and about