INSECT VARIETY. 215 



and inky ditches in the neighbourhood o£ London, the little, 

 slender, long'-legged Bolichopus nobilitatus, a kind of strolling 

 player, who extemporises in the sunlight ar round of tournament 

 and mock amour. As in Racine's tragedies, a female opens the 

 jousts. You first notice her tinsel-green body and immaculate 

 wings as she sips luarginal moisture or proceeds over the scummy 

 water searching for a tasteful infusion, a feat performed by an 

 oar-like movement of the legs. Some other flies and spiders, 

 be it observed, similarly traverse the surface. 



But not long does she remain thus unmolested, for of a 

 sudden a glassy buzz announces an arrival of larger males, with 

 black-tipped wings and portentous anal claspers, one of whom 

 immediately begins court by horizontally opening and closing 

 his wings, and as she makes off thus ludicrously dogs her 

 retiring footsteps. His wings now open and close quicker and 

 quicker, and commence to vibrate when expanded, till, having 

 gained a certain proximity, taking several quick straight or 

 circular darts within the compass of a few inches, he lightly 

 floats buzzing around her head, in the style of Bacchus greeting 

 Ariadne as depicted by Gaspar Poussin, and with an agility that 

 would postulate some special adaptation of wing muscle. 



The fugitive female resents this familiarity by adjourning to 

 a proximate puddle, and now the male, with his eyes glowing 

 like emeralds, occupies the deserted arena. At such a crisis, or 

 during the mock courtship, should a rival alight in the vicinity, 

 a sharp tilting ensues. Jerking in the air, these little atoms 

 dash in one another's faces like game-cocks, while angry 

 spiracidar (?) tinklings resound in the vaporous herbage. This' 

 is the summons for other males, and the flirtation usually con- 

 cludes in a vicious affray all round. The two phases of this 

 suggestive little tale are depicted in Plate V., Fig. 1. 



The horizontal wing movement here noticed, a phenomenon 

 common to a group of little flies, and incessantly performed by 

 some that crawl over plant leaves, Seioptera, is thought by Dr. 

 Landois, in the case of the aquatic genus Stratiomi/s, to postulate 

 some organ of instrumental music, though after all its production 

 may be, I fancy, spiracular. '' The Water Flies,''' he says, '^ make 

 a noise of a cracking, crackling colour, which, in treating of the 

 stridulation of insects, cannot be omitted. It is j)roduced by the 



