CHAPTER VIII 



MAY-FLIES (EPHEMERIDyE) l 



THE first useful account of the life-history of an 

 Ephemera that we meet in zoological literature is to 

 be found in Swammerdam's Biblia Natures. The 

 species investigated by him is now named Palingenia 

 longicauda. The larva is common in the large, slow 

 and muddy rivers of Holland. Swammerdam's his- 

 tory, a good deal abridged and annotated, is here 

 reproduced in English as an introduction to the May- 

 flies or Ephemerae. Some particulars respecting the 

 author, taken from Miall and Denny on the Cock- 

 roach, are prefixed. 



Swammerdam's great posthumous work, the Biblia 

 Natures, contains about a dozen life-histories of In- 

 sects worked out in more or less detail. Of these the 

 May-fly (published during the author's lifetime, in 

 1675) is the most famous ; that on the Honey Bee the 

 most elaborate. Swammerdam was ten years younger 

 than Malpighi, and knew Malpighi's treatise on 



1 The names used by modern naturalists are employed wher- 

 ever the species described by Swammerdam and Reaumur can 

 be clearly identified. 



