MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 3G9 



may be considered as of three kinds — hovering — gyra- 

 tions — and dancing. 



You have often in t]ie woods and other places seen 

 flies suspended as it were in the air, their wings all the 

 while moving so rapidly as to be almost invisible. This 

 hoverii/g, which seems peculiar to the aphidivorous 

 flies, has been also noticed by De Geer''. I have often 

 amused ir'vself with watching them ; but when I have 

 endeavoured to entrap them with my forceps, they have 

 immediately shifted their quarters, and resumed their 

 amusement elsewhere. The most remarkable insects 

 in this respect aie the sphinxes, and from this they 

 doubtless took their name oniawk-moths. When they 

 unfold their long tongue, and wipe its sweets from any 

 nectariferous flower, they always keep upon the wing, 

 suspending themselves over it till they have exhausted 

 them, when they fly away to another. The species 

 called by collectors the humming-bird (S. Stellaiarum, 

 L.), and by some persons mistaken for a real one, is 

 remarkable for this, and the motion of its wings is in- 

 conceivably rapid"'. 



The gyrations of insects take place either when they 

 are reposing, or when tyey are flying or swimming. — 

 I was once much amused by observing the actions of a 

 minute moth (Tinea) upon a leaf on which it was sta- 

 tioned. Making its head the centre of its revolutions, 

 it turned round and round with considerable rapidity, 

 as if it had the vertigo, for some time. I did not, how- 

 ever, succeed in my attempts to take it. — Scaliger no- 

 ticed a similar motion in the book-crab (Chelijer can- 

 croides) ^. 



" vi. 104. " Rai. IJist. Ins. 133. I . '' Lesser, L. i. 24S, note 22. 

 VOL. II. 2 B 



