EPHEMEROPTERA. 71 



era are blown from the Great Lakes into the cities 

 on their borders, and, attracted by hght, settle on the 

 gas-lamps.^ 



A Rochester Fellow,^ in his amusing account of the 

 American EcHpse Expedition of i860, states that the 

 May-flies occur in such numbers on one of the Gull 

 islands in Lake Vv'innipeg that a member of the party 

 on his return from a short walk was so enveloped with 

 them as to wholly change the color of his clothing, and 

 the water was covered with the exuviae of the ephem- 

 erae so that it was impossible to get a clean dipperful 

 anywhere. The party found the western coast of the 

 lake lined with a windrow of dead May- flies nearly a 

 foot deep, which they traced from their canoe, for a 

 distance of twenty miles.^ 



The Ephemeroptera continue to retain in their 

 adult and larval stages several characters which have 

 led some entomologists to regard them as the most 

 primitive of all winged insects. The simple neuration 

 of the wings ; slow development through many moults 

 of the adult, so that no lines can be drawn between 

 larva, pupa and imago ; the stylets at the end of the 

 abdomen, and the paired external openings of the 

 organs of reproduction, are supposed to indicate a 

 very primitive origin. On the other hand, the imago 

 is farther specialized by reduction, resembling the 



1 See figure in First Book of Zoology, p. 103. 



2 See The Winnipeg Country, Cupples, Upham & Co., 1886, 

 p. 92. 



3 This book is now published by N. D. C. Hodges, 47 Lafay- 

 ette Place, New York, with the author's real name, Samuel H. 

 Scudder, so that this story has aij entirely trustworthy origin. 



