Miscellaneous . 213 



tities ; and many of them I found were reduced to the sad extremity 

 of feeding on their departed friends, whose dead bodies were strewed 

 about the paths in all directions. They were preyed upon in great 

 numbers by a black beetle. They were not all of one species. The 

 common one, with a yellow body and seven black spots, was most 

 abundant ; next to that came the species with two black spots ; the 

 species with nine spots was scarcer still ; and I took only a few spe- 

 cimens of one with a black body and orange spots. The intensity 

 of their colouring varied from a light yellow to a deep orange. 



The ladybirds continued at Broadstairs till Thursday, August 12, 

 when a strong wind from the south setting in cleared the whole 

 district. They however found a resting-place at Margate, where I 

 saw them in the same profusion in which they had appeared at 

 Broadstairs. In a line from the Fort to the railway terminus they 

 covered everything, and the air was filled with them. Up to this 

 time, none, or not an unusual number of these creatures, had been 

 seen at Ramsgate ; but on Saturday, the wind having got into the 

 east on the previous evening, they began to appear there ; and on that 

 evening they appeared to me to be as numerous at Ramsgate as at 

 Broadstairs and Margate. On the 17th and 18th of August I ob- 

 served a smaller swarm of these insects at Broadstairs, the wind 

 blowing in a north-westerly direction. 



From several accounts in the Daily News of the 1 6th and 1 7th of 

 August, it appears that on Friday, August 13, the same insects were 

 observed at Southend ; on the same day in great numbers in London ; 

 and on the following Saturday and Sunday at Brighton. 



Large flights of these creatures are not uncommon. Various 

 swarms of them have been recorded as occurring at Brighton, where 

 they have been supposed to have been carried from the neighbouring 

 hop-grounds, as the larva of the ladybird feeds on the aphides which 

 are so destructive of the hop-plant. On the present occasion, how- 

 ever, it appears that these insects must have been brought by the 

 south-west wind from the continent. That the direction of the wind 

 determined their appearance is evident from the fact that they disap- 

 peared at Broadstairs on the day they were seen at Margate, and 

 were not found at Margate after their appearance at Ramsgate. The 

 cause of the swarming of these insects is probably a scarcity of their 

 natural food during the prevalence of a strong wind, which, sweeping 

 over a large tract of the earth's surface, carries along with it all who 

 are disposed to go. That this is the case seems confirmed by the 

 fact that at first these insects only appeared by degrees; — a few 

 arriving and the number gradually increasing on a particular spot. 

 One of the correspondents of the Daily News states that they came 

 over in the form of a cloud in the direction of Calais and Ostend ; 

 but although I was on the spot at the time, I neither saw nor heard 

 anything of this cloud. I may add, as a fact for your Folk-Lore, 

 that in the Isle of Thanet some of the common people regarded this 

 visitation as foreboding the death of a great personage. Such a flight 

 occurred just before the death of George the Third. — Athenceum for 

 Aug. 28, p. 912. 



