252 FOOD OF INSECTS. 



Others in their perfect state select the pollen which swells the anthers (bees, 

 LepturcB, and Mordellai) ; and a still larger class of these the honey 

 secreted in the nectaries (most of the Lepidoptera, Hymenoptera, and 

 Diptera). 



Nor are insects confined to vegetables in their recent or unmanufactured 

 state. A beam of oak, when it has supported the roof of a castle five 

 hundred years, is as much to the taste of some (^Anobia) as the same tree 

 was in its growing state to that of others ; another class (Ptini) would 

 sooner feast on the herbarium of Brunfelsius than on the greenest herbs 

 that grow ; and a third (some Tinea, Termites), to whom 



" a river and a sea 



Are a dish of tea, 



And a kingdom bread and butter," 



would prefer the geographical treasures of Saxton or Speed, in spite of 

 their ink and alum, to the freshest rind of the flax plant. The larva of a 

 little fly (^Oscinis cellaris), whose economy, as I can witness from my own 

 observations, is admirably described by Mentzelius^, disdains to feed on any 

 thing but wine or beer, which, like Boniface in the play, it may be said 

 both to eat and drink ; though, unlike its toping counterpart, indifferent 

 to the age of its liquor, which, whether sweet or sour, is equally accep- 

 table. 



A diversity of food almost as great may be boasted by the insects 

 which feed on animal substances. Some (flesh-flies, carrion-beetles, &tc.) 

 devour dead carcasses only, which they will not touch until imbued with 

 the haut gout of putridity. Others, like Mr. Bruce's Abyssinians, prefer- 

 ring their meat before it has passed through the hands of the butcher, 

 select it from living victims, and may with justice pride themselves upon 

 the peculiar freshness of their diet. Of these last, different tribes follow 

 different procedures. The Ichneumons devour the flesh of the insects into 

 which they have insinuated themselves. Some of the (Estri, fixed in a 

 spacious apartment beneath the skin of an ox or deer, regale themselves 

 on a purulent secretion with which they are surrounded. Others of the same 

 tribe, partial to a higher temperature, attach themselves to the interior of 

 the stomach of a horse, and in a bath of chyme of 102 degrees of Fah- 

 renheit revel on its juices. The various species of horse-flies dart their 

 sharp lancets into the veins of quadrupeds, and satiate themselves in living 

 streams ; while the gnat, the flea, the bug, and the louse, plunge their 

 proboscis even into those of us lords of the creation, and banquet on " the 

 ruddy drops which warm our hearts." Some make their repast upon 

 birds only, as the fly of the swallow, and other Ornithomyia, and the bird- 

 louse ; insects nearly allied, though one is dipterous and the other apte- 

 rous. And a most singular animal belonging to the latter tribe (Nycteri- 

 bia Vespertilionis) revenges upon the bat its ravages of the insect world^ ; 

 while snails give subsistence to Drilus Jlavescens, a beetle, and its singular 

 apterous female, in the larva state, as well as to the larvae of glow-worms.^ 

 Another numerous class kill their prey outright, either devouring its solid 

 parts, as the predaceous and rove-beetles, he, or imbibing its juices only, 



1 Ephem. German. An. xii. Obs. 58. Ray, Hist. Ins. 261. 

 * Linn. Trans, xi. 11. t. 3. f. 5—7. 



^ Desmarest and Audouin in Ann. des Sciences Nat. i. 67. ii. 129. 443. vii. 353. ; quoted 

 in Burmeister's Manual of Ent. p. 552. 



