212 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



ENTOMOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. 



TRIALS OF INSECTS. 



BY R. \. ROGERS., KINGSTON, ONT. 



We do not intend in this article to allude to the troubles that the 

 members of the insect world endure in their ordinary every day life, — to 

 their difficulties in getting out of their old clothes when nature bids them 

 change their dress ; nor to the risks they run from countless enemies, 

 many-legged, four-legged, two-legged and no-legged, — nor yet to the 

 labors some have to' sustain in laying up their bread for a rainy season. 

 Nor is our title intended as the text on which to found a disquisition 

 on the sufferings that the genus /wmo has had to endure (not at the hands, 

 but at the mouths and tails of the insect hosts) ever since that sad day 

 when old Noah, at the advice of Archangel Gabriel (who ought to have 

 known better) broke his word to the serpent. All of course know the 

 legend, yet as Lord Macaulay often did for his erudite school-boy, so will 

 we do, and repeat and give the story of the origin of all venomous anthro- 

 pophagus insects. We have it from the veracious Turk, so none but a 

 Russophile or an anti-Jingoist will doubt it, and entomologists know 

 neither country nor politics (whatever else they may know). 



Ages agone, when the righteous Noah was safely floating over tlie 

 troubled waters of the angry flood in his " allotted ocean-tent," the ark 

 drifting before the gale struck a rock and sprang a leak. In vain Noah 

 toiled to repair the damage done and thus avoid what seemed to be the 

 fate of all of Adam's line. At last, the old Serpent, who after having 

 caused the destruction of the world had carefully ensconced himself in 

 the ark, came to him and promised to help him out of his mishap if he 

 would undertake to supply him v/ith human flesh for his daily food when 

 the waters should abate. The patriarch, urged by dire necessity and fear, 

 made the promise, and the Serpent coiling himself up in the hole stopped 

 the leak. When at length the ark rested on dry land once again and all 

 were going out of the dark ship into the pleasant sunshine, the snake, 

 wearied and worn, crawled out of the hole and demanded a fulfilment of 

 the promise. The antediluvian, however, following Gabriel's advice, 

 refused to fulfil his pledge, and seizing his benefactor, burnt him in the 

 flames on his altar and scattered his ashes to the winds. But heaven, 

 unwilling that the Serpent should thus be dej)rived of his promised 



