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



dence. Whittier wrote a didactic poem of 42 lines entitled 

 '' King Solomon and the Ants," inculcating magnanimity, while 

 Ben Jonson, Prior, Milton, Thomson, Rogers and Young, not to 

 mention later poets, have all sung to some extent of the insects. 

 Among these, however, there is really very little of entomological 

 interest, as the object usually is to point a moral, as: 



"O mortal man, who livest here by toil, 

 Do not complain of this thy hard estate; 

 That like an emmet thou must ever moil, 

 Is a sad sentence of an ancient date." 



Thomson. 



Robert Herrick, who is full of odd conceits, shows us a beggar 

 supplicating the fairy queen thus: 



"Black I'm grown for want of meat; 

 Give me then an ant to eat." 



and Butler, in Hudibras, emphasizes the medical use of the insect 

 in the following: 



"Till purging comfits and ant's eggs 

 Had almost brought him off his legs 



Ants' eggs, or rather their pupae, were administered by physi- 

 cians of the 17th century, as a cure for the lovesick, while tincture 

 of " Formica rufa " or red ants, is still to be found in some modern 

 pharmacopaeas as a remedy for rheumatic pains, paralysis and 

 epilepsy. 



As the author was for some years a student of the Diptera, the 

 poetical references to that order have been of more than passing 

 interest to him. Arranging these according to the usual family 

 succession, the first'group is the Tipulidae: 



"Nay, when beginning to beseech 

 The cause that led to my rebuff, 

 The answer was as strange a speech 

 'A Daddy-Longlegs, sure enough!" 



Thomas Hood Love Lane. 



Daddy-Long-Legs is the vulgar name applied to Tipula oleracea 

 in England, according to Harold Bastin. 



In view of the widespread damage done in America by a no- 

 torious member of the Cecidomyiidae, the Hessian fly, it is not 

 surprising to find that our poets have recognized it; although 

 the sentiment expressed in the following of Whittier's will hardly 

 find favor with our orchardists and winter-wheat growers: 



"Let earth withold her goodly root, 



Let mildew blight the rye, 

 Give to the worm the orchard's fruit, 

 The wheatfield to the fly." 



The Corn Song. 



