1906] 
K\AB—SWARMIXG OF CULEX PIPIEXS 
127 
puhlislied in 1798. Swinton descrihe.s some swarms which he, together with a friend, 
witnessed on August 20, 1766, in a garden at Oxford. The account has been drawn 
upon by later writers but I rpiote it here as it brings out very clearly the habit of con- 
gregating over prominent objects. There can be little doubt that the swarms in 
cpiestion were Culices as Swinton especially remarks upon the great annoyance 
catised that season by the bites of the unusually abundant “gnats.” He relates 
that “about half an hour before sunset, such an immense number of gnats filled 
the atmosphere in which we breathe, as I had never seen before. e both of us 
also then observed six columns, formed iutirely of these insects, ascending from the 
tops of six boughs of an a[)ple-tree, * * * to the height of at least fifty or sixty feet. 
Two of these columns seemed perfectly erect and jterpendicular, three of them 
oblique, and one approached somewhat towards a pyramidal form.” He further 
relates that other swarms were seen in the vicinity on the same evening. In con- 
clusion he states: “ I have been informed by the Reverend Dr. Wyndham, arden 
of Wadham College in this University, that, about thirty years ago, many columns 
of gnats were ])erceived to rise from the top of the steeple of the cathedral church 
at Salisbury, by a considerable number of |)eo])le. He likewi.se declareil, that these 
columns were seen both by himself and the Reverend Dr. .John Clarke, then Dean 
of .Salisbury; that, at a small distance, they resembled smoke; and that this at first 
occasioned a sort of alarm, many believing that the church was on fire.” 
There are a numlter of accounts t)f such swarms about church steeples causing 
alarm of fire. We have them from (fermar (1813), Roll, Kitin' and .Spence, and 
Hagen. Roll records three such swarms. One of them on the steeple of the Nicolai 
church in Hamburg took place on a .June evening at nine oclock. The discovery 
of the true nature of the apparent smoke, after the fire-department had been called 
to the spot, caused great merriment in the crowd of sjx'ctators. In 1807, when the 
St. IMary’s church in Xeubrandenburg .served as a jtowder magazine, the sudden 
news that the steeple was on fire caused many of the inhabitants to flee jirecipitately 
from the city. As the column of smoke about the steeple did not increa.se, some 
courageous men finally ventured onto the tower and discovered that the source of 
alarm was an immen.se swarm of gnats. Another swarm was observed about the 
cross of this same cliurch-steejtle, at a height of 300 feet, on the afternoon of Atigust 
20, 1859. Hagen relates that dense swarms of gnats about the clmrch-stee])le at 
Fischhausen caused an alarm of fire which has earned for the inhabitants the nick- 
name of “]\Iucken])eitscher.” Koch has reported a swarm from the wings of a 
windmill, at a height of |ierhaps a htmdred feet from the ground, curled by the breeze 
and resembling smoke. 
