RAFT OF EGGS OF THE GNAT. 73 



egg state, resemble a buoy which is fixed by an 

 anchor. As they come to matiiiity, they sink deejjcr, 

 and at last, when they leave the egg as worms, creej) 

 to the bottom.''* This fable, which was first men- 

 tioned by Pliny, is repeated verbatim by Bingley.^ 

 The impossibility of a gnat spinning a thread, and 

 plunging into the water to fix it at the bottom, never 

 struck these writers. 



We are more anxious to expose these erroneous 

 accounts, from a persuasion that a taste for natural 

 history has been more injured by numerous similar 

 statements, which could not be verified by a student, 

 in many popular works, than by the driest skeleton 

 descriptions of those who have merely pursued Natural 

 History as a science of names. 



The problem of the gnat is to construct a boat- 

 shaped raft, which will float, of eggs heavy enough to 

 sink in water if dropped into it one by one. The 

 eggs are nearly of the pyramidal form of a pocket 

 gunpowder-flask, rather pointed at the upper and 

 broad at the under end, with a projection like the 

 mouth of a bottle. The first operation of the mother 

 gnat is to fix herself by the tour fore-legs to the side 

 of a bucket, or upon a floating leaf, with her body 

 level with and resting upon the surface of the water, 

 excepting the last ring of the tail, which is a little 

 raised ; she then crosses her two hind legs in form of 

 an X, the inner opening of which is intended to form 

 the scaffolding of her structure. She accordingly 

 brings the inner angle of her crossed legs close to the 

 raised part of her body and places in it an egg, ccWeivA, 

 as is usual among insects, with a glutinous fluid. On 

 each side of this egg she places another, all which 

 adhere firmly together by means of their glue, and 

 form a triangular figure thus % *, which is the stern 



* Goldsmith, Animated Nature, vi, 337. 

 + Bingley, Animal Biography, iii, 439, 3d.ed. 

 7 



