366 INSECT TRANSFORMATIONS. 



watching the proceedings of a pair of these elegant 

 little creatures by candle-light, when they are more 

 lively and alert than in the sunshine. We were 

 reading a large quarto book with wide print and very 

 broad margins, the white colour of which seemed not 

 only to attract but to deceive them in the same way 

 as a bird or a blow-fly will mistake a pane of glass 

 for the " viewless air," and dash recklessly against 

 it. Our little snowy-winged flies, apparently from 

 a similar mistake, dashed themselves about on the 

 pages of the book. We have been accustomed, from 

 boyhood, to see gnats and other insects tumbling 

 about in a similar manner when we have been read- 

 ing at night, a circumstance which few of our readers 

 can have failed to observe ; but we always pitied them 

 on the supposition that it was in consequence of their 

 heedlessly singeing their wings in the candle, and 

 thus unfitting themselves to fly. This, no doubt, is a 

 frequent cause of their falling on a book ; but it was 

 not so with the two flies which we observed, for they 

 remained quite perfect and uninjured. The most 

 remarkable circumstance was, that they almost uni- 

 formly fell on the back, which seems to indicate that 

 they fly with the back downwards, a mode of flight 

 not a little singular, though it has an analogy to the 

 swimming of some aquatic insects {NotoncctidcB^ 

 Leach). When they felt the paper, they spun round 

 in circles and half circles with great rapidity, and 

 evidently not so much for the purpose of getting upon 

 their feet as of continuing the gyrations they had 

 been performing while on the wing. This we in- 

 ferred from their being in no hurry to get up, and 

 from their continuing, even when they got upon their 

 feet, to wheel round and round, as if waltzing with 

 the express design of showing that they could dance 

 on the "light fantastic toe,'* as well as on the wing. 

 Their circular movement is not jieculiar to them, 



