194 



HALP HOURS WITH INSECTS. [Packard. 



Fig. 142. 



feet in swarms, and describing, like fire works, radii of 

 circles centring at our feet ; the crickets, whose wings had 

 been rasping their love notes, or rather, chirrups, close them 

 tightly over their backs, and run, like so many quail, fr^om 

 one grassy covert to another. We always expect to find 

 certain moths hidden in the grass of the lawn or hay field, 

 which, startled at our approach, rise and wildly fly off in their 

 headlong course to a fresh hiding place ; and by the roadside, 

 swarms of the yellow Colias alighting at some pool to quench 



their thirst. The mosqui- 

 toes we scarcely expect to 

 find on the breezy plains. 

 The still forest, the darker 

 and damper the better, is 

 their home. Favoring winds 

 support their halting flight 

 and bear them to our houses. 

 On the other hand the Black 

 fly (Fig. 142) and midge are 

 only found on the edges of 

 woods, in open fields and on 

 the bare hill tops. A hun- 

 dred bees may be seen in 

 clover fields to one in the 

 woods, the flowers attracting 



Black Fly and young, enlarged. ^^^^^ ^.^^,^^^, ^vowing there. 



The Hessian fly hovers in swarms over wheat fields. The 

 ant loves the roadside and the open glades in forests, and 

 the wasps, when they do nest in the woods, prefer places 

 where the scattered trees seem endeavoring to break away 

 from the restraints of the woodland. 



The insects of the field come and go with the changes of 

 the season. Troops of moths fly about in the grass lands 

 in May, and desert the fields during June and July, until 

 August ushers in fresh hordes, whose highly colored, brightly 



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