do not dust. I think they do; and if they do, whether they wash also.*

The alauda pratensis of Ray was the poor dupe that was educating the booby of a cuckoo mentioned in my letter of October last.t

Your letter came too late for me to procure a ring-ousel for Mr. Tunstal during their autumnal visit; but I will endeavour to get him one when they call on us again in April. I am glad that you and that gentleman saw my Andalusian birds; I hope they answered your expectation. Royston, or grey crows, are winter birds that come much about the same time with the woodcock: they, like the fieldfare and redwing, have no apparent reason for migration; for, as they fare in the winter like their congeners, so might they, in all appearance, in the summer. Was not Tenant, when a boy, mistaken? Did he not find a misselthrush's nest, and take it for the nest of a fieldfare?

The stock-dove or wood-pigeon, anas Raii, is the last winter bird of passage which appears with us, § and is not seen till towards the end of November. About twenty years ago, they abounded in the district of Selborne, and strings of them were seen morning and evening that reached a mile or more; but since the beechen woods have been greatly thinned, they have much decreased in number. The ring-dove, palumbus Raii, stays with us the whole year, and breeds several times through the summer.

Before I received your letter of October last, I had just remarked in my journal that the trees were unusually green. This uncommon verdure lasted on late into November, and may be accounted for from a late spring, a cool and moist

Larks certainly dust, and, in a cage, wash themselves, but I am not aware that they do the latter when in a wild state.-ED.

+ Letter xxxvi. to the Hon. Daines Barrington.

The Royston crow breeds, and is stationary, on all the west coast of Scotland; and it is probable that most of those which visit England during winter, arrive from Sweden and Norway, or the countries adjacent,—few, if any, of the Scotch individuals leaving their regular abodes.-W. J.

§ Here, as in a previous passage, Mr. White has spoken of the wood-pigeon as synonimous with the stock-dove. It is more usual to apply that name to the ring-dove. Perhaps, with the view of avoiding confusion, it would be better that the use of the name wood-pigeon should be altogether abandoned. - MR. BENNETT.

summer, but more particularly from vast armies of chafers, or tree-beetles, which, in many places, reduced whole woods to a leafless naked state. These trees shot again at midsummer, and then retained their foliage till very late in the year.

My musical friend, at whose house I am now visiting, has tried all the owls that are his near neighbours, with a pitchpipe set at concert pitch, and finds they all hoot in B flat. He will examine the nightingales next spring.

LETTER XLIII.

TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ.

SELBORNE, March 30, 1771. DEAR SIR,-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 it is drying. These eggs produce maggots, called jumpers, which, harbouring in

Most probably acarus autumnalis. It buries itself at the roots of the hairs on the extremities, producing intolerable itching, attended by inflammation and considerable tumours, and sometimes even occasioning fevers.-W. J.

the gammons and best part 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 cabbage chrysomela, moving by a leap, with very thick hind-legs." 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 Mouffet, 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 the parent of

*This is most probably the haltica nemorum, called by the farmers the Fly and Black Jack, so well described by Messrs. Kirby and Spence, in their admirable chapters on indirect injuries. It attacks and devours the first cotyledon leaves, as soon as they are unfolded; so that, on account of their ravages, the land is often obliged to be resown, and with no better success. By these entomologists it is stated, on the authority of an eminent agriculturist, that, from this cause alone, the loss sustained in the turnip crops in Devonshire, in 1786, was not less than 100,000l. Great damage is also sometimes done by the little curculio contractus, which, in the same manner, pierces a hole in the cuticle. When the plant is more advanced, and out of danger from these pigmy foes, the black larva of a saw-fly takes their place, and occasionally does no little mischief, whole districts being sometimes stripped by them, and, in 1783, many thousand acres were on this account ploughed up. The caterpillar of papilio brassica is sometimes found in great numbers, and the wire-worm also does occasionally great damage, both to turnips and other vegetable and flower-roots. Mr. Kirby mentions a field in which onefourth was destroyed, and which the owner calculated at 100%. One year, the same person sowed a field three times with turnips, which were twice wholly, and the third time a great part, cut off by this insect.-W. J.