Vegetable FLY, a curious natural production chiefly found in the West Indies. "Excepting that it has no wings, it resembles the drone both in size and colour more than any other British insect. In the month of May it buries itself in the earth, and begins to vegetate. By the latter end of July, the tree is arrived at its full growth, and resembles a coral branch; and is about three inches high, and bears several little pods, which dropping off become worms, and from thence flies, like the British caterpillar."
Phil. Trans. for 1763. Such was the account originally given of this extraordinary production. But several boxes of these flies having been sent to Dr. Hill for examination, his report was this: "There is in Martinique a fungus of the clavaria kind, different in species from those hitherto known. It produces sbooles from its sides; I call it therefore clavaria sboolisfera. It grows on putrid animal bodies, as our fungus ex pede equino from the dead horse's hoof. The cicada is common in Martinique; and in its nymphal state, in which the old authors call it tettigometra, it buries itself under dead leaves to wait its change; and when the season is unfavourable, many perish. The seeds of the clavaria find a proper bed on this dead insect, and grow. The tettigometra is among the cicadae in the British museum; the clavaria is just now known. This is the fact, and all the fact; though the untaught inhabitants suppose a fly to vegetate, and though there is a Spanish drawing of the plant's growing into a trifoliate tree, and it has been figured with the creature flying with this tree upon its back." See Edward's Gleanings of Natural History.