INSECT VARIETY. 93 



meadows and along- their willowed banks, where the water runs 

 brownlj, the dashing males of the common May-fly glitter 

 seraphieally in the afternoon sunshine towards the close of May, 

 rising and sinking about a foot, with rhythmical motion that 

 makes their pearly wings the envy of the speckled trout and an 

 habitual solace to the angler. The females, though mostly un- 

 observed, are sometimes in air, when the flashing males seize 

 upon them, and they pair^ enshrined in light. The smaller 

 Caddis Flies leave their watery grottoes to similarly weave the 

 dance of amour m the last rays of sunlight, and I remember, on 

 the 7th of September, 1874, when wending homeward over the 

 bridge that spans the ornamental water in Regent's Park, at 

 about 6 p.m., having noticed a yellow Ryclropsyclie (?) organising 

 a dance in the fashion of its lepidopterous prototypes. The 

 larger and paler sex floated fitfully and almost playfully in and 

 out among the groiips of smaller males, who rose and fell in 

 misty clouds, and these swooping down from time to time 

 selected the fair who presumed, the male clinging on with the 

 tarsi of his fore-legs to the abdomen of his suitress, and by 

 reason of his unusual weight compelling a precipitate flutter to 

 the grassy margent or a ducking (Plate I., Fig. 8). 



Anxious to verify the fact whether the dances of the small 

 Crane Flies were a nu})tial ceremony, I watched the per- 

 formers, who turned out almost invariably to be coteries of males 

 attracted by each other's performance; these would dance until 

 wearied, and then, perching on the buds and leaves, sip honey- 

 dew. However, at Guildford, the 15th of the ensuing March, I 

 scrutinised at sunset the gambols of the so-called Winter Gnat, 

 that arising from garden heaps of mouldering leaves in No- 

 vember, enlivens the dead season by its chori among evergreens. 

 And I then found that when the glittering males, who were 

 springing up and down in the frosty sunshine, crossed a female 

 in figure of 8, the rush of wings grew brisker, and a couple, 

 separating from the throng, fell to the earth. A slender species, 

 specially designed for its more elegant semicircles and quadrants, 

 is the swinging Pendulum Crane Fly, that commences at noon, 

 just when the April foliage and balmy airs arrive, a dance of 



* Kirby and Sponce, Lettr. XVII. 



