not fond of going near the water, but feed on earthworms, that are common on sheep-walks and downs. They breed on fallows and lay-fields abounding with grey mossy flints, which much resemble their young in colour, among which they skulk and conceal themselves. They make no nest, but lay their eggs on the bare ground, producing in common but two at a time. There is reason to think their young run soon after they are hatched, and that the old ones do not feed them, but only lead them about at the time of feeding, which, for the most part, is in the night." Thus far my friend.

In the manners of this bird, you see, there is something very analogous to the bustard, whom it also somewhat resembles in aspect and make, and in the structure of its feet.

For a long time I have desired my relation to look out for these birds in Andalusia; and now he writes me word that, for the first time, he saw one dead in the market, on the 3d of September.

When the oedicnemus flies, it stretches out its legs straight behind, like a heron.

LETTER XXXIV.

Selborne, March 30, 1771.

THERE 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 swarm sometimes 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 chimneys, and laying its eggs in the bacon while

* Probably the Acarus autumnalis of Shaw's "Naturalist's Miscellany," vol. ii. pl. 42, but separated by Latreille from the true Acari, on account of its possessing but six legs, instead of eight, and placed by him in his genus Leptus.-L. J.

it is drying. These eggs produce maggots, called 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."+ In very hot summers they abound to an amazing degree, and, as you walk in a field, or in a garden, make a pat

* This is, probably, the same insect that produces the jumpers in cheese, a figure and description of which will be found in Curtis's "British Entomology," (vol. viii. pl. 126,) under the name of Tyrophaga casei.-L. J.

+ It may be observed here, that there are two insects, which are both equally destructive to turnips, but which are very different, and which also make their attacks at different periods of the growth of the plant. What is usually called the turnip-fly, (or turnip-flea, as Kirby and Spence would designate it, from its small size and great powers of leaping,) is the Chrysomela nemorum of Linnæus, the Haltica nemorum of modern entomologists, which devours the seedling, or smooth leaves of the young plant, oftentimes to such an extent as to require the land to be α, the grub magnified: b, the same of the natural size: c, the pupa magnified: d, the same of the natural size: e, the perfect insect magnified: f, the same of the natural size, feeding on the leaf of a turnip: ff, holes riddled in the leaf by the insect:

re-sown.

tering like rain, by jumping on the leaves of the turnips or cabbages.

g, burrows in the leaf caused by the grub, which mines between the two surfaces, devouring the parenchyma. The destructive habits of this insect have been much investigated of late years, and for a further account of it the reader is referred to a Memoir by Mr. Le-Keux in the "Trans. of the Entomological Soc. of London," vol. ii. p. 24, and to a more recent one by Mr. Curtis, in the "Journal of the Royal Agricult. Society," vol. ii. p. 193.

By the black dolphin, the country-people, perhaps, alluded to a small black caterpillar, the larva of a saw-fly, Tenthredo, Linn., the Athalia centifolia, Panz., and also known by the names of black-palmer, or black-nigger. a, the black-jack, or nigger-caterpillar, of the natural size: b, the same magnified: c, the cocoon formed under ground by the full-grown grub: d, the pupa extracted from the cocoon magnified: e, the perfect insect: f, ditto magnified: 99 g, spots on the edge of the turnip-leaf where the

There is an oestrus, known in these parts to every ploughboy, which, because it is omitted by Linnæus,*

eggs are deposited by the female saw-fly. This insect does not commence its attacks upon the turnip till the plant is more advanced, and the rough leaves have begun to appear, which it of tentimes completely destroys, stripping whole fields, from its immense numbers. The habits and economy of this species will be found detailed by Mr. Yarrell in the "Zoological Transactions," vol. ii. p. 67; and also by Mr. Newport in an Essay, which obtained the prize in 1837, of the Entomological Society and Agricultural Association of Saffron Walden. Mr. Curtis has likewise made it the subject of a second memoir in the "Journ. of the Roy. Agricult. Soc." vol. ii. p. 364.-L. J.

66

*The insect here alluded to by White was confounded by Linnæus with the Estrus bovis, and described by him in the Systema Naturæ," under that name. It is the Estrus equi of Mr. Bracy Clark, who has detailed its structure and habits, as well as those of several other species of this genus, in a memoir