CULICID^— GNATS. 219 



for which at the time no satisfactory account could be giv^en, 

 but which was most probably produced by the same cause. ^ 

 And in the year 1766, in the month of August, they ap- 

 peared in such incredible numbers at Oxford as to resemble 

 a black cloud, darkening the air and almost intercepting 

 the rays of the sun. Mr. John Swinton mentions, that in 

 the evening of the 20th, about half an hour before sunset, 

 he was in the garden of Wadham College, when he saw six 

 columns of these insects ascending from the tops of six 

 boughs of an apple-tree, two in a perpendicular, three in an 

 oblique direction, and one in a pyramidal form, to the height 

 of fifty or sixty feet. Their bite was so envenomed, that 

 it was attended by violent and alarming inflammation; and 

 one when killed usually contained as much blood as would 

 cover three or four square inches of wall.^ A similar column, 

 of two or three feet in diameter and about twenty feet in 

 height, was seen at eight o'clock in the evening of Sunday, 

 July 14th, 1833, in Kensington Gardens. The upper por- 

 tion of the column being curved to the east, the whole re- 

 sembled the letter J inverted. The Gnats in every part of 

 the column were in the liveliest motion.'^ The author of the 

 "Faerie Queene" seems to have witnessed the like curious 

 phenomenon, which furnished him with the following beau- 

 tiful simile : 



As when a swarme of gnats at eventide 



Out of the fennes of Allan doe arise, 



Their murmuring small trumpets sownden wide, 



Whiles in the air their clust'ring army ilies, 



That as a cloud doth seem to dim the skies; 



Ne man nor beast may rest or take repast, 



For their sharp wounds and noyous injuries, 



Till the fierce northern wind with blust'ring blast 



Doth blow them quite away, and in the ocean cast. 



Ligon, in his History of Barbados, makes the following 

 curious observation relative to a species of insects which he 

 calls "Flyes," but which are more probably Gnats or Mos- 

 quitoes : " There is not only a race of all these kinds, that 

 go in a generation, but upon new occasions, new kinds ; as, 

 after a great downfall of rain, when the ground has been 



1 K. & S. Introd., i. 114. 

 ^ Phil. Trans., Ivii. 112-3. 

 » Mag. of Nat. Hist., vi. 545. 



