374 INSECT TRANSFORMATIONS. 



the tub, where he found every piece of earth above 

 the surface of the water swarming with the flies, 

 some just beginning to quit their old skin^ others 

 preparing to fly, and others already on the wing, 

 while every where under water they were seen in a 

 greater or less degree of forwardness. The threaten- 

 ed storm of rain and lightening at length coming on, 

 he was compelled to leave the interesting scene ; but, 

 to prevent the escape of the insects, he had the tub 

 covered with a cloth. The violence of the rain ceas- 

 ed in about half an hour, when he returned to the 

 garden, and as soon as the cloth was removed from 

 the tub he perceived that the number of the flies was 

 prodigiously augmented, and continued to increase for 

 some time as he stood watching them. Many flew 

 away, and many more were drowned, but the number 

 which had already undergone their transformation 

 from the earth in the tub would have been sufficient 

 to fill it, exclusively of crowds of others which the 

 light had attracted from a distance. He again spread 

 the cloth over the tub, and the light was held above 

 it : immediately the cloth was almost concealed by 

 the vast multitudes which alighted upon it, and they 

 might have been taken by handfuUs from the candle- 

 stick. What he had observed, however, at the tub, 

 was nothing to the scene now exhibited on the banks 

 of the river, to which he was again attracted by the 

 exclamations of his gardener. 



' The countless numbers,' he says, ^ of ephe- 

 merae which swarmed over the water can neither be 

 conceived nor expressed. When snow falls thickest 

 and in the largest flakes, the air is never so com- 

 pletely full of them as that which we witnessed filled 

 with ephemerae. 1 had scarcely remained a few 

 minutes in one place, when the step on which 1 stood 

 was covered in every part with their bodies, from two 

 to four inches in depth. Near the lowest step, a 



