PROC. ENT. SOC. WASH., VOL. 24, NO. 7-8, OCT. -NOV., 1922 169 



Like other beetles he is fed on dung 

 He has eleven feet with which he crawls, 

 Trailing a blistering slime." 



With all due allowances for poetic license and exalted ecstasies, 

 it seems evident that the poet evolved this description entirely 

 from the resources of his inner consciousness. In other words, 

 it affords an example of what might aptly be termed "subjec- 

 tive entomology," less striking examples of which occur in the 

 writings of certain modern, entomological taxonomists. The 

 vision of a gad-fly which was at the same time a "beetle" 

 possessing "eleven legs" is one calculated to convince an ento- 

 mologist that the 18th amendment to the Constitution had 

 become null .and void, and that the heyday of the "high-ball" 

 and the "gin-rickey" had indeed returned. 



No English poet, early or recent, has made more effective, nor, 

 from an entomological standpoint, more correct use of allusions 

 to insects than Thomas Hood, 1798-1845. Hood is best remem- 

 bered perhaps by his " Song of the Shirt, " but his " Mid-summer 

 Fairies" has been most frequently quoted by entomological 

 writers. This latter poem contains no less than 17 references 

 to insects of seven different species, including grasshoppers, 

 ants, flies, gnats, the silk-worm, and of course the honey-bee. 

 While none of Hood's verses is dedicated to insects, more than a 

 score of his poems contain references to them. In his verse 

 various forms of insect life and their behaviour are used as a 

 means of expression, or of impressing the reader with the atmos- 

 phere of the scene described; as for instance, in "The Haunted 

 House": 



"The centipede along the threshold crept, 

 The cob-web hung across the mazy tangle, 

 And in its winding sheet the maggot slept, 



At every nook and ingle. 



***** 



"The wood-louse dropped and rolled into a ball, 

 Touched by some impulse occult or mechanic; 

 And nameless beetles ran along the wall 

 In universal panic." 



In "Love Lane," the poet makes use of the familiar insect 

 fauna of the field with comical effect throughout the poem: 



" I vowed to give her all my heart, 

 To love her till my life took leave, 

 And painted all a lover's smart 

 Except a wasp gone up my sleeve. 



"But when I ventured to abide 

 Her father and her mother's grants 

 Sudden she started up and cried, 

 'O dear, I am all over ants!" 



