NOT KISSABLE. 121 



The Lady Breeze-fly, I am grieved to say, is 

 far more to be dreaded than her lord. These 

 insects can never, one would suppose, enjoy the 

 luxury and delight, or whatever may be the 

 proper term applicable to such a universal habit 

 as kissing. How could a winged lady, I should 

 like to know, be kissed by a winged wooer when 

 her lips are a bundle of lancets, six in number, 

 and as sharp as a surgeon's? True the male has 

 four blade-like instruments arming the mouth, 

 but it is questionable whether he uses them for 

 other purposes than that of sucking nectar from 

 flowers. The apparatus of the female is beau- 

 tifully adapted for puncturing the skin and then 

 pumping up the fluid through the sheath of the 

 lancets, that acts as a tube or canula. It would 

 be of trifling interest to advert more in detail 

 to the minute anatomy of these insects; that 

 can be better learned from works on structural 

 entomology ; the habits of the insect in far- 

 away lands, sketched from personal gleanings, 

 being more strictly my province. The rambler 

 alone has an opportunity to investigate the 

 haunts and watch the habits of strange beasts, 

 birds, and insects ; to the anatomist, at home 

 in cosy closet, belongs the task of developing, 

 with scalpel and microscope, the complicated 



