NOT KISSABLE. 131 
The Lady Breeze-fly, I am grieved to say, is 
far more to be dreaded than her lord. These 
insects can never, one would suppose, enjoy the 
luxury and delight, or whatever may be the 
proper term applicable to such a universal habit 
as kissing. How could a winged lady, I should 
like to know, be kissed by a winged wooer when 
her lips are a bundle of lancets, six in number, 
and as sharp as a surgeon’s? True the male has 
four blade-like instruments arming the mouth, 
but it is questionable whether he uses them for 
other purposes than that of sucking nectar from 
flowers. The apparatus of the female is beau- 
tifully adapted for puncturing the skin and then 
pumping up the fluid through the sheath of the 
lancets, that acts as a tube or canula. It would 
be of trifling interest to advert more in detail 
to the minute anatomy of these insects; that 
can be better learned from works on structural 
entomology; the habits of the imsect in far- 
away lands, sketched from personal gleanings, 
being more strictly my province. The rambler 
alone has an opportunity to investigate the 
haunts and watch the habits of strange beasts, 
birds, and insects; to the anatomist, at home 
in cosy closet, belongs the task of developing, 
with scalpel and microscope, the complicated 
