82 



the various objects described, in most instances cut from the author's 

 own drawings on the wood, and all of them executed with great taste 

 and scrupulous fidelity. The work is chronologically arranged, the 

 early appearance of insects in March, on the snow, being thus noticed. 



" F. — You have not yet observed any symptoms of activity in the insect tribes, I 

 presume ? C. — Few, except such as are to be found throughout the winter, are to be 

 met with : a few tipulidan gnats fly abroad on sunshiny days. I have lately observed 

 in pine-woods in one particular place, several insects crawling about the snow, exactly 

 resembling small Tipulae, even having halteres, but totally destitute of wings. They 

 are about one-fourth of an inch in length : they have been rather numerous ; I took 

 six of them in one evening. F. — They are doubtless the Chionea Araneoides: it is 

 singular that I have observed these in company with another very remarkable apterous 

 insect, belonging to a winged family (Panorpidae), in some numbers. I allude to Bo- 

 reus hyemalis, an insect much like a flea. I have never seen either but in one spot, 

 the black-woods to the south of the Masuippi, near its junction with the Coatacook; 

 it was at this season, and on the snow." — p. 51. 



The following remarks, if not altogether novel, exhibit the care with 

 which Mr. Gosse has observed, and the accuracy with which he re- 

 cords facts. 



" It would appear from many experiments and observations, that insects, and per- 

 haps all animals with cold fluids, are able to resist the efi'ects of very low degrees of 

 temperature. I have myself had larvae so hard frozen as to be broken in two like a 

 piece of solid ice, and yet found that on being thawed, those which had not been bro- 

 ken, but had been just as solid as the others, were quite lively and apparently unin- 

 jured. A few days ago, I found a large thick larva of a chafer (Melolontha ?) in the 

 heart of a birch-tree, surrounded by its ejecta, which, as well as the grub itself, were 

 hard frozen. In this instance, too, the insect was found to be alive, when thawed by 

 the warmth of the house. I have had ants (Formicae) inclosed in the midst of a piece 

 of solid ice, having fallen into the water before it had frozen, which, on being melted 

 out and placed awhile in the sunbeams, gradually gave signs of life, and at length 

 crawled about, as if nothing had happened. These and other observations show that 

 insects sustain, without injury, severities of cold which would be fatal to the superior 

 animals ; but it seems that in general those species which survive the winter in the 

 imago state become torpid ; and this negative sort of existence is found in other ani- 

 mals to be a preventive of the ordinary effects of great cold on vitality." — p. 61. 



In the month of May the musquitoes make their appearance, and 

 Mr. Gosse gives us a fearful picture of them. 



" It is more particularly by night that they make their insidious attacks ; they 

 swarm in our bed-chambers, and it is a very common thing to see in the morning ma- 

 ny of them lazily pitched about the walls and ceiling, their abdomens distended, and 

 almost bursting with the blood which they have extracted from our veins at their lei- 

 sure. It is almost impossible to do anything in the fields after sunset, as one hand is 

 perpetually in requisition to drive them from our faces, but they return most pertina- 



