48 Fritz Johansen and I. C. Nielsen. 



With July we are in tlie middle of summer and the insect 

 life is now at its height. But instead of describing, as above, the 

 successive development and appearance of the different insects, I 

 shall give the reader an accout of a day's excursion over the grounds 

 were I made my entomological investigations. 



We are now in the middle of July. The "Danmark" lies on 

 Ihe open water in the harbour and to reach the land we ferry over 

 in Ihe forenoon. On the land the known flowers are in full blossom 

 over the wide plain round about the the now almost dry "Basiskaer", 

 but of insects we see very little. The species seen on a short excur- 

 sion are soon enumerated; in greatest numbers are the gnats which 

 "stand" in swarms over the lakes; sometimes we see a bee dusting 

 the flowers or we startle a pair of large crane-flies, an Argynnis, 

 Cidaria or other butterflies. But if we go further and examine more 

 closely we find much more, as will be seen. 



We may begin by turning over a number of the flat stones 

 which are strewn over the plain. We can then be almost always 

 certain that various spiders are hidden under them, among others 

 small, black species with spherical abdomen; the females are almost 

 always found sitting on their flat, circular egg-cocoons, луЬ1с11 are 

 fixed in crevices in the stones and contain new-laid, yellow eggs, 

 whilst the males to begin with place themselves in a warlike posi- 

 tion and raise their chelae-like palps, but soon disappear into their 

 holes. Or we may find quite small, red or yellowish-white mites 

 crawling about on the under side of the stone, and the young 

 spiders rushing wildly away to the nearest hiding-place. We also 

 see some longish, violet, small animals, Avhich on being disturbed 

 throw themselves up into the air and fall down again, to repeat the 

 same manœuvre; these are of course the spring-tails which thus 

 seek to escape being caught. We also find the pupæ of various 

 butterflies, both living and ruptured cases — mostly the latter. 

 On the ground about run various spiders, — some have spun 

 their fine threads over the ground, but most of them belong to the 

 species which catch their prey whilst on the move; in a hole at 

 one place, for example, we find a large form which has caught a 

 Tipiila arctica and is now busy eating its booty (later on in the 

 summer, we also find it bearing its egg cocoons and still later its 

 newly hatched young on its back). On the sun-dried parts we meet 

 with the earlier mentioned bugs (Nysiiis) often copulating, from 

 which we can see that the males are somewhat smaller than the 

 females. If we try to seize them, it never seems to occur to them 

 to use their wings; they get in amongst the leaves of the plants or 

 crawl down into the many chinks in the ground. As mostly ground- 



