Short Communications. 73 



been some of the happiest of my existence, and have awakened 

 and cherished such an admiration of nature, and such a love 

 for the country and its scenes, as I think can never be appre- 

 ciated by the inhabitants of large towns, and which I cannot 

 describe so well as in the words of one of my friends, in a 

 beautiful apostrophe tb^itogilsiidjj ra^ieiij tawngufltU-^eyBr 

 to return: — torn sdT .nwoj aiih lo teoiJa Isqbnnq ad) lo 

 .idj/i lo C S£ ? 9mii edl 38 teiuteistytjig^Yfegj (id-giid bim bfim 

 bsmu te-i I WH&*I fifeldSfe^t ftt^^bWihfWtp«ito^j^«ifi3JBW 'i^*A 

 - Whose mountains were my boyhood's wild delight, 



Whose rocks, and woods, and torrents,, were to me .yeb 



The food of my soul's youthful appetite, j ,. 



1 Were music to my ear, a blessing to my sight. 

 ajBlq eirn moil gwouBwa aifi lo :il^in iBisnsg ad I .nwot 



1832. . 2m ,* s >W VL 



rrfs^in© ^^inojaoag&^iisef&e^ 



to my notice this day, for the first time during the present 

 season; and I was much amused with witnessing its evolu- 

 tions, as it hovered over a frame of alpine plants in my gar- 

 den. The object on which it appeared to have set its affections 

 ^aSia^ppto/ Aubrietza /zesperidiflora, an elegant little plant, 

 much resembling the old J^lyssum deltoideum L., figured in 

 Gurtis's Botanical Magazine, t. 126. ; and which is now an 

 Aubrietz'tf also, being called Aubrietza deltoidea by Decan- 

 dolle. The jBombylius poised itself in the air (much in the 

 same way as the common kestrel or windhover,, Falco Tin- 

 nunculus L., does), with its body perfectly motionless, but its 

 wings all the while vibrating most rapidly. It then, by a sort 

 of sudden jerk, (like the kestrel again"), descended nearer to 

 the surface, and to the object it had in vjew. After several 

 evolutions of this kind, the insect at length , settled upon one 

 of the blossoms, its legs firmly fixed on the petals, its wings 

 at the same time vibrating with astonishing velocity, and its 

 proboscis inserted into the tube of the flower. In this posi- 

 tion it remained for several minutes, pumping away with its 

 long proboscis among the. anthers of one and the same blos- 

 som ; every crevice and corner of which, high and low, it 

 must have probed again and again to the very bottom. 

 During the above operation, 1 observed that the fore legs of 

 the Z&>mbylius were frequently applied to the proboscis, pro- 

 bably to clear the instrument of any farina that might adhere 

 to its exterior. From what I witnessed on the present occa- 

 sion, I cannot but conclude that this insect must have a 

 powerful effect in scattering the pollen of plants on the stigma, 

 and those parts that require fructification. The above remarks 



