INSECTS. 283 
it accumulates on the head or body ? "Why should new 
insects year after year make a perpetually changing 
warfare against the farmer's crops in gradation with the 
exhaustion of the soil ? Why should the Hessians bring 
the Hessian fly, or vice versa^ as you please ? And a 
great many other Whys which never have been and 
never will be answered till the '^ heavens shall be rolled 
up as a scroll." 
Insects feed voraciously on leaves, vegetables, fruit, on 
human blood — sad to relate — and fortunately on one 
another. Mosquitoes, thank Heaven, have parasites that 
cling to the delicate rings of their bodies, stinging the 
arch-stinger, and inflicting by their venomous bites the 
same agonies the suff'erers inflict on others. It is to be 
hoped those gentlemen will increase and multiply, and 
after exterminating mosquitoes may pay their addresses 
to the black gnats. Certain families, especially of the 
coleojptera^ emit a species of phosphorescent light in the 
dark, occasionally light enough to read by. The majority 
of insects have wings, but many have not, and in some 
only one gender is winged. A few kinds, such as the 
locusts, katydids, crickets, death-ticks, emit sounds, to 
which man's sympathies have added either a pleasant or 
painful association, and produce these peculiar cries gen- 
erally by rubbing the wings or some part of the body. 
The wings of insects do not exceed four, and are often 
limited to two ; their legs are six ; some have antennae 
or feelers, others long whisks from their tails. 
JThe neuroptera^ or net-winged m&ects, Jlorfiiegen, gauze- 
flies, as they are called by the Germans, include the 
principal pets of the fly-fisher. Their bodies are long, 
