OBSERVATIONS ON INSECTS AND VERMES. 
INSECTS IN GENERALE. 
THE day and night insects occupy the annuals alternately: the 
papilios, muscze, and apes, are succeeded at the close of day by 
phalenz, earwigs, woodlice, &c. In the dusk of the evening, when 
beetles begin to buz, partridges begin to call; these two circum- 
stances are exactly coincident. 
Ivy is the last flower that supports the hymenopterous and dip- 
terous insects. On sunny days quite on to November they swarm 
on trees covered with this plant; and when they disappear, 
probably retire under the shelter of its leaves, concealing themselves 
between its fibres and the trees which it entwines.—WHITE. 
This I have often observed, having seen bees and other winged 
insects swarming about the flowers of the ivy very late in the 
autumn.—MARKWICK. 
Spiders, woodlice, lepismze in cupboards and among sugar, some 
empedes, gnats, flies of several species, some phaleenz in hedges, 
earth worms, &c., are stirring at all times when winters are mild, 
and are of great service to those soft-billed birds that never 
leave us. 
On every sunny day the winter through clouds of insects usually 
called gnats (I suppose tipula and empedes) appear sporting and 
dancing over the tops of the evergreen-trees in the shrubbery, and 
striking about as if the business of generation was still going on. 
Hence it appears that these diptera (which by their sizes appear to be 
of different species), are not subject to a torpid state in the winter, 
