176 Mr. Albert Miller on the dispersal 
stationary or else local insect tribes, which, by habit, food, 
or bodily organization, are confined to their native haunts. 
Their appearance in out of the way localities deserves to 
be fully investigated, and in following their tracks, we 
may join Thomas Moore, in saying: 
‘* Poor wanderers of a stormy day, 
From wave to wave we are driven, 
And fancy’s flash and reason’s ray, 
Serve but to light the troubled way.” 
Various authors have lit up parts of the troubled way 
of these insect-waifs, by throwing reason’s ray on the 
means of their accidental transportation. Sir Charles 
Lyell, Messrs. Kirby, Darwin, Wallace, Wollaston, Bates, 
and other naturalists, have shown what human agency, 
for instance, trade and navigation,* the carrying by larger 
animals and birds, by the ocean and rivers, by floating 
trunks of trees, and matted floating islands, pumice stone,f 
icebergs, and other drifting objects, and what atmos- 
pheric conveyance can, in some cases, accomplish. 
But I agree with Mr. Bates, that the amount of dis- 
semination by atmospheric means is still much underrated, 
and it has therefore appeared desirable to me, to bring 
together into a small compass, some of the leading facts 
which have forced on my mind the conclusion, that aérial 
involuntary locomotion is a most active agency in regu- 
lating the distribution of sedentary terrestrial Entoma. 
It is well known that Monads, Infusoria, winged and 
other seeds, the ashes of volcanic eruptions, the sands of 
the deserts of Africa and America, and other substances, 
are carried over land and sea by heavy gales. Fishes and 
newts have been known to be taken up by waterspouts 
or whirlwinds, and deposited far from their original 
localities, when the forces which had raised them, were 
spent. A. von Humboldt has recorded that small 
* Consult Von Frauenfeld’s paper in Verhandl. zool.-bot. G. in Wien, 
XVII. pp. 425-464, 1867. 
+ I have often found such floating and porous pumice stones on the 
Rhine, along the line of rejectamenta left by the spring floods, and I used 
to find these stones resorted to by various small Carabide, such as Bem- 
bidium, Anchomenus, Loricera, Chlenius, Omophron, and others. I can 
therefore confirm Mr. Bates’ supposition (‘Naturalist on the River Ama- 
zons,’ 2nd ed. 1864, p. 299), that they often serve as vehicles for insects 
and seeds to distant shores. I have also seen such stones left high and dry 
by a freshet, the pores filled with river mud, and seeds germinating in it. 
A. M. 
