C. hæmorrhoidalis (Brown), abdominal margin fringed with rufous hairs (Fabr.), is the largest of the gnat tribe, and a native of Cayenne. The antennæ are beset with thick verticillate hairs, the first joint naked, and of a shining blue color; head brown, with the crown shining blue; legs blue, thighs testaceous beneath; wings white, with a brown r.b.

C. pipiens-Cinereous with eight brown rings (Linn. Fn. Suec., &c.), is the common gnat of this country, and inhabits Europe and the greater part of Asia and America, about watery places. It is every where known by its shrill buzzing noise, and severe puncture. It appears in immense numbers in Lapland during their summer. The antennæ of the male are pectinated. According to Kalm the mosquitos are a variety of this insect.

Humboldt (Personal Narrative) observes that the geographical description of the culiers of South America does not at all appear to be dependant on the heat of the climate, the excess of humidity, or the thickness of the forests, but on local circumstances difficult to characterise. He says, that almost every stream has its peculiar species.

We have noticed in our introduction some of the ravages of this tribe.

Several species of this genus have a severe bite, but few are to be compared to the common gnat (culier pipiens, L.). In certain districts of France, Reaumur informs us that he has seen people whose arms and legs have become quite monstrous from wounds inflicted by gnats; and in some cases in such a state as to render it doubtful whether amputation would not be necessary. In the neighbourhood of the Crimea, the Russian soldiers are obliged to sleep in sacks to defend themselves from the mosquitos; and even this is not a sufficient security, for several of them die in consequence of mortification produced by the bites of these furious blood

suckers.

In this country gnats follow us to all our haunts, intrude into our most secret retirements, assail us in the city and in the country, in our houses and in our fields, in the sun and in the shade: nay, they pursue us to our pillows, and either keep us awake by the ceaseless hum of their droning pipe, and their incessant endeavours to fix themselves upon our face, or some uncovered part of our body. In the year 1736, we are told they were so numerous, that vast columns of them were seen to rise in the air from Salisbury cathedral, which at a distance resembled columns of smoke, and occasioned many people to think that the cathedral was on fire. A similar occurrence, in like manner giving rise to an alarm of the church being on fire, took place in July 1812, at Sagan in Silesia. In the following year at Norwich, in May, at about six o'clock in the evening, the inhabitants of that city were alarmed by the appearance of smoke issuing from the upper window of the spite of the cathedral, for which at the time no satisfactory account could be given, but which was most probably produced by the same cause. And in the year 1766, in the month of August, they appeared in such incredible numbers at Oxford as

to resemble a black cloud darkening the air and almost totally intercepting the rays of the sun. One day, a little before sunset, six columns of them were observed to ascend from the boughs of an apple tree, some in a perpendicular and others in an oblique direction to the height of fifty or sixty feet. Their bite was so envenomed, that it was attended by violent and alarming inflammation: and one when killed usually contained as much blood as would cover three or four square inches of wall. Spenser seems to have witnessed a similar appearance of them :

As when a swarm of gnats at eventide Out of the fennes of Allan doe arise, Their murmuring small trumpets sownden wide, While in the air their clustering army flies, That as a cloud does seem to dim the skies; Ne man nor beast may rest or take repast For their sharp wounds and noyous injuries. Till the fierce northern wind with the blustering blast Doth blow them quite away, and in the ocean cast.

Our readers have often heard of the annoyances of the mosquito and gnat tribes in hot countries: but they seem endowed with the privilege of resisting any degree of cold, and of bearing any degree of heat. In Lapland their numbers are so prodigious as to be compared to a flight of snow when the flakes fall thickest, or to the dust of the earth. The natives cannot take a mouthful of food, or lie down to sleep in their cabins, unless they be fumigated almost to suffocation. In the air you cannot draw your breath without having your mouth and nostrils filled with them; and unguents of tar, fish-grease, or cream; nets steeped in fetid birch oil, are scarcely sufficient to protect even the case-hardened cuticle of the Laplander from their bite. This seemingly unfavorable circumstance may be considered, in another point of view, however, as constituting one of the advantages of the country, being, in the words of Linné, Lapponum calamitas felicissima; since the legions of larvæ which fill the lakes of Lapland form a delicious and tempting repast to innumerable multitudes of aquatic birds; and thus contribute to the support of the very nation which they so strangely infest.

The mosquito, so much dreaded by the inhabitants of the West Indies, and America, is supposed to be a variety of the common European gnat, which derives additional vigor from the warmer and moister atmosphere of those regions.

Genus 6. Empis.-Antennæ setaceous; mouth furnished with an inflected haustellum and proboscis; haustellum with a single-valved sheath and three bristles; feelers short and filiform.

This genus is carnivorous, and subsists on flies and other small insects, which they seize with their feet, and pierce with their rostrum, to suck the blood and juices. Some are found on flowers, in the winged state. None of the larvæ are known, and little of its economy. Genus 7. Conops.-Antennæ clavated, the clava accuminated; mouth furnished with a projecting geniculate proboscis.

The insects of this genus are found remarkably active in gardens, where they subsist on the nectareous juices of flowers. The head is large

and nearly hemispherical; the eyes large, and almost oval, and the antennæ formed of three articulations, the middle one of which is long and cylindrical, the last joint terminating in a little point. The larvæ are unknown. The males have on the antepenultimate ventral segment a singular process, varying in length and shape in the different species, standing nearly at right angles with the belly convex towards the trunk and concave towards the anus. De Geer supposes that this, with the anal extremity, forms a forceps with which this fly seizes its female.

The genus is divided in the Linnæan system into two families; the first of which includes those species which have the sheath of the sucker single-valved, abbreviated, and enclosing a single bristle; the other those with the sheath consisting of two equal valves, and which is geniculated both at the base and in the middle. The latter are the myopa of Fabricius. In the Fabrician Supp. Ent. Syst. the Linnæan conops subcoleoptratus is described under the new genus, thereva. Genus 8. Asilus.-Antennæ filiform; manth furnished with a straight, horny, bivalve haustellum, gibbous at the base.

The chief food of these insects is supplied by various species of the dipterous and lepidopterous orders. But they also attack cattle. They are always upon the chase: they seize their prey with their anterior legs and immediately apply their haustellum. When at rest their wings are generally incumbent on the abdomen, which is long, small, and often hairy toward the feet, which terminate in small claws. Their larvæ feed in the earth, on the roots of plants: they change into a pupa coarctata beset with setæ.

These are the wasp flies of some writers; the species described by Gmelin are very numerous, of which the chief are, A. algirus which has the body entirely brown, and inhabits Africa. Fabricius and Gmelin. A. astuans is a native of North America, is cinereous, and has the three last segments of the abdomen white. Linné and Gmelin. A. aestivus inhabits Europe; the color is cinereous, with three black lines on the thorax; legs black; shanks testaceous. Schrank. Scopoli describes a variety in which the legs are entirely black. The motions of A. crabroniformis, the hornet-fly, are curious. This insect lives upon the smaller flies. When we are walking it will alight just before us, as soon as we come up it flies a little further, and will thus be oùr avantcourier for the whole length of a field. This usually takes place when a path lies under a hedge; and perhaps the object of this manœuvre may be the capture of prey. Our motions may drive a number of insects before us; and so be instrumental in supplying it with a meal. Other species of the genus are said by Mr. Kirby to have the same habit.

Genus 9. Bombylius (humble-bee).-Antenna subulated, united at the base; mouth having a long setaceous, straight, bivalve haustellum; valves unequal, with three seta; two short hairy palpi.

The humble-bee seizes on the nectareous juice of flowers, which it sucks flying. Ray reckons nineteen species, but Linnæus only five. See BOMEYLIUS.

The habits of these animals, which form a connecting link between the wasp and hive-bee tribes, have been well illustrated by Reaumur and M. P. Huber. The population of their nests may be divided into four orders of individuals: the larger females; the small females; the males; and the workers. The larger females, like the female wasps, are the original founders of the republic. They are often so large that by the side of the small ones, or the workers, which in every other respect they exactly resemble, they look like giants opposed to pigmies. They are excluded from the pupa in the autumn; and pair in that season, with males produced from the eggs of the small females. They pass the winter under ground, and, as appears from an observation of M. P. Huber, in a particular apartment, separate from the nest, and rendered warm by a carpeting of moss and grass, but without any supply of food. Early in the spring (for they make their first appearance as soon as the catkins of the sallows and willows are in flower), like the female wasps, they lay the foundation of a new colony without the assistance of any neuters, which all perish before the winter. In some instances, however, if a conjecture of M. de la Billardiere be correct, these creatures have an assistant assigned to them. He says, at this season (the approach of winter) he found in the nest of apis sylvarum (Kirby) some old females and workers, whose wings were fastened together to retain them in the nest by hindering them from flying; these wings in each individual were fastened together at the extremity, by means of some brown wax. The large female, besides having the care of the young brood, and the collecting of honey and pollen, is principally employed in the construction of the cells in which her eggs are to be laid; which M. P. Huber seems to think, though they often assist in it, the workers are not able to complete by themselves. So rapid is the female in this work, that to make a cell, fill it with pollen, commit one or two eggs to it, and cover them in, requires only the short space of half an hour. Her family at first consists only of workers, which are necessary to assist her in her labors; these appear in May and June; but the males and females are later, and sometimes are not produced before August and September.

A small kind of female amongst the humble bees, must now be noticed. Like those of the wasps and hive-bees, these minor queens produce only male eggs, which come out in time to fertilise the young females that found the vernal colonies. M. P. Huber suspects that, as in the case of the female bee, it is a different kind of food that developes their ovaries, and so distinguishes them from the workers. They are gene rally attended by a small number of males, who form their court.

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driven away by the others, which pursued her, beating their wings with the utmost fury, to the bottom of the nest. The cell was then constructed, and some of them at the same time oviposited in it. The queen returned to the charge, exhibiting similar signs of anger; and chasing them away again, put her head into the cell, when seizing the eggs that had been laid, she was observed to eat thein with great avidity. The same scene was again renewed, with the same issue. After this, one of the small females returned and covered the empty cells with wax. When the mother-queen was removed, several of the small females contended for the cell with indescribable rage, all endeavouring to lay their eggs in it at the same time. These small females perish in the autumn.

Of an intermediate size, between the large and small females, the males may be known, by their longer, more filiform, and slenderer antennæ; by the different shape, and by the beard of their mandibles. Their posterior tibiæ also want the corbicula and pecten that distinguish the individuals of the other sex, and their posterior plantæ have no auricle. We learn from Reaumur that the male humble bees are not an idle race, but work in concert with the rest to repair any damage or derangement that may befal the common habitation.

The first fruits of the queen-mother's vernal parturition are the workers, and they assist her as soon as they are excluded from the pupa, in her various labors. To them also is committed the construction of the waxen vault that covers and defends the nest. When any individual larva has spun its cocoon and assumed the pupa, the workers remove all the wax from it; and as soon as it has attained to its perfect state, which takes place in about five days, the cocoons are used to hold honey or pollen. When the bees discharge the honey into them, upon their return from their excursions, they open their mouths, and contract their bodies, which occasions the honey to fall into the reservoir. Sixty of these honey-pots are occasionally found in a single nest, and more than forty are sometimes filled in a day. In collecting honey, humble-bees, if they cannot get at that contained in any flower by its natural opening, will often make an aperture at the base of the corolla, or even in the calyx, that they may insert their proboscis in the very place where nature has stored up her nectar. M. Huber relates a singular anecdote of some hive-bees paying a visit to a nest of humble-bees placed under a box not far from their hive, in order to steal or beg their honey; which places in a strong light the good temper of the latter. This happened in a time of scarcity. The hivebees, after pillaging, had taken almost entire possession of the nest. Some humble-bees which remained in spite of this disaster, went out to collect provisions; and bringing home the surplus after they had supplied their own immediate wants, the hive-bees followed them, and did not quit them till they had obtained the fruit of their labors. They licked them, presented to them their proboscis, surrounded them, and thus at last persuaded them to part with the contents of their honey-bags. The humble-bees after this

flew away to collect a fresh supply. The hivebees did them no harm, and never once showed their stings; so that it seems to have been persuasion rather than force that produced this singular instance of self-denial. This remarkable manœuvre was practised for more than three weeks; when the wasps being attracted by the same cause, the humble-bees entirely forsook the nest. The workers are the most numerous part of the community.

M. Huber gives one most astonishing instance of the ingenuity of these insects, which we cannot omit. He put under a bell-glass about a dozen humble-bees without any store of wax, along with a comb of about ten silken cocoons, so unequal in height that it was impossible the mass should stand firmly. Its unsteadiness disquieted the humble-bees extremely. Their affection for their young led them to mount upon the cocoons for the sake of imparting warmth to the enclosed little ones, but in attempting this the comb tottered so violently that the scheme was almost impracticable. To remedy this inconvenience, and to make the comb steady, they had recourse to a most ingenious expedient. Two or three of the bees got upon the comb, stretched themselves over its edge, and, with their head downwards, fixed their fore feet on the table upon which it stood, whilst with their hind feet they kept it from falling. In this constrained and painful posture, fresh bees relieving their comrades when weary, did these affectionate little insects support the comb for nearly three days! At the end of this period they had prepared a sufficiency of wax with which they built pillars that kept it in a firm position: but by some accident afterwards they got displaced, when they had again recourse to their former manœuvre for supplying their place; on this operation they perseveringly continued, until M. Huber, pitying their hard case, relieved them by fixing the object of their attention firmly on the table.

Sir George Mackenzie makes the following observations on the vision of humble-bees, which seem to illustrate other peculiarities of their economy. Happening to observe a number of humble bees entering the door of a dark outhouse, I had the curiosity,' says he, 'to examine where they had their nest, and I went in, leaving the door half open. I saw the bees coming from a hole in the floor near the wall, and the instant they arrived at the margin of the light admitted by the door, they took wing, although at the distance of several feet from the spot from which they usually rose into the air. I varied the position of this margin or division between the light and darkness, but this made no difference, the bees in every case beginning their flight as soon as they reached the light. While the door was open, I noticed that the bees which arrived appeared to be completely puzzled by the alteration of the position of the door. Some of them alighted, and wandered about in all directions on the floor, crossing repeatedly the direct path to the nest, but never following it. A very few, by accident apparently, got close to the wall, and reached the nest. Those which chanced to alight near the same part of the door by which tl.ey had been accustomed to enter, immediately

went through, but from the position of the door, they passed in the direction opposite their nest. As soon as they got within the door, they became as much puzzled as the others. Many flew away, as if to try a new route homewards. As soon as I shut the door, remaining in the inside, the bees on entering, turned directly towards the hole in the floor; and none of them going, attempted to fly till they reached the light. I was cruel enough to repeat the experiment several times, and each time to keep the homewardbound laborers in suspense and difficulty for some minutes. These facts seem to prove that bees, although by some means they rapidly and unerringly traverse the air, cannot discover a track on the ground, when the usual marks are removed. They did not discover it even when they met other bees coming out, a proof that they have no means of communication, but that each insect depends on its own instinct exclusively.

I made an experiment on the hive-bee, by lifting the hive, and placing it a few yards, three or four, from the place where it usually stood. I was of course stung for my pains; but I had the satisfaction to see the returning bees pass quite close to the hive where it now stood, and go on to the spot where it had stood when they left it. They seemed not only puzzled but angry, and I was obliged to keep at a respectful distance. When the hive was replaced, those bees that had left it after its first removal, stopped for a little at the place where they had quitted it; but in a few minutes all seemed to be quiet and regular as formerly. I removed another hive in the evening, when none of the inhabitants were abroad, and in the morning there was no resumption of confusion whatever.'-Edinburgh Philosophical Journal.

Genus 10, Hippobosca.― Antennæ filiform; mouth with a short, cylindrical, bivalve haustellum; the valves equal; feet armed with several claws; the body fat and hard. Scopoli adds, that the rostrum has only one bristie. Geoffroy observes, that the hippoboscæ are the only dipterous insects that want stemmata, except the culices, and that their antennæ are setaceous, and composed of a single hair. According to Schaffer, the abdomen is as broad as the thorax. Reaumur has denominated the hippoboscæ, ❝ mouches arraignées.' It is also called in Normandy mouches bretonnes;' and elsewhere, mouches d'Espagne.' In England they bear the name of spider-flies, horse-flies, the largest species being extremely troublesome to horses. They abound in woods and marshy places, and are generally found attached to the bodies of quadrupeds and birds, on the juices of which they live. In the act of feeding they thrust their acute proboscis into the skin, which occasions a smart like a flea-bite, and they become so firmly attached by their numerous claws, that it is scarcely possible by any effort to remove them, without tearing away portions of the flesh. The species are not numerous. They do not appear to have any larva; but are the produce of an egg which partakes of the two-fold character of being at the same time an egg and a pupa. The female, at distant intervals, deposits an egg,

which in magnitude is nearly equal to the whole bulk of its parent's body: the figure of it is oval, with an excavated depression at the lower end; the color, at its first exclusion, is milk-white, except a large black spot on the fore part, from which it afterwards becomes brown, and then of a jet black, with a very high polish. This change in color marks the progressive advancement of the insect enclosed towards its maturity of formation, the parts becoming gradually developed. The egg deposited in autumn acquires its deepest color in the summer following, at which time the insect bursts from its confinement in the winged form. The principal species is, H. equina. Wingobtuse; thorax variegated; feet armed with four claws. Linn. (horse spider-fly, Donov. Br. Ins.) It inhabits Europe, and is of a disgusting form, flat, hard, and not easily killed by pressure. The head is brown; thorax brown, varied with yellowish, and a band of the same down the middle; wings hyaline, with a brown spot near the outer margin; legs annulated with yellow and brown. Length about three-quarters of an inch. No insect is more tormenting to the horse than this. Attaching itself frequently under the belly, behind the hind legs, it will goad the quickest animal to madness; its movements are generally sideways or backward, like those of the crab.

ORDER VII.-APTERA.

The simple definition of this order is, wings, none; the genera are variously divided. Linaé himself included, as we have stated, the Crustacea in this part of his system. The older writers, Gesner, Aldrovandus, and Johnson, had placed the crustacea between the fishes and mollusca. Fabricius divided the crustacea from insects, and formed several distinct classes for their reception. In the Supplement to his Entomologia Systematica, the following is given as his final arrangement :

lip.

Class polygonata. Many maxilla within the

Genus 1. Oniscus, 2. Ligia, 3. Idotea, 4. Cymothoa, 5. Monoculus.

Class kleistagnatha. Many maxillæ, closing the mouth. Lip none.

Genus 1. Cancer, 2. Calappa, 3. Ocypode, 4. Leucosia, 5. Parthenope, 6. Inachus, 7. Dromia, 8. Dorippe, 9. Orithyia, 10. Portunus, 11. Matuta, 12. Hippa, 13. Symethis, 14. Limulus.

Class erochnata. Many maxillæ outside the lip, covered by the palpi.

Genus 1. Albunea, 2. Scyllarus, 3. Pallinurus, 4. Palæmon, 5. Alpheus, 6. Astacus, 7. Penaus, 8. Crangon, 9. Pagurus, 10. Galathea, 11. Squilla, 12. Posydon, 13. Gammarus.

The most prejudiced of Linne's followers, says Dr. Leach, now admit that they have characters sufficient to establish them as a distinct class. Crustacea,' says Mr. Kirby, 'agree with insecta in having a body divided into segments, furnished with jointed legs, compound eyes, and antennæ. Their nervous system also is not materially different, and they are both oviparous. They differ from them in having the greater insections of the body less strongly marked; in the greater number of legs on the trunk, the anterior ones performing the office of maxilla; in their eyes