58 ROMANCE OF THE INSECT WORLD CHAP. 



from the aphides and other ant-cows that hybcrnate 

 along with them. Vegetable honey they have not 

 learnt to preserve, probably because their young do 

 not heed confinement in cells, like the larva? of the 

 honey-bee. But on the whole the disproved maxim 

 of the uselessness of storage of food by ants holds 

 good of the English species, which succumb to sleep 

 more or less, and require little or no nutriment during 

 the cold winter months. 



When the sun is up, and everything is gay and 

 bright, and around all nature seems quivering with 

 eager motion and activity, we are apt to imagine that 

 we see before us the whole population of the insect 

 world. In reality a multitude as vast shun the 

 glare of day, and, like the votaries of fashion, quit 

 their couch and rouse into thorough wakefulness at 

 the sober hour of twilight, when their more vulgar 

 brethren have retired to rest. The "painted butterfly," 

 the " fervent bees/' the " quivering nations" of flies, 

 bask in the sunshine and search for food. But after 

 the sun has sunk many moths emerge from hiding, 

 the shard-born beetle with drowsy hum sallies forth, 

 and numerous others of its kind ; and the gnats begin 

 to wing their airy flight, and hunt down their living 

 prey with a bloodthirsty and relentless ferocity, 

 totally at variance with the aspect of things so fragile 

 and so smalj. Some larvae too are night-feeders, but 

 to the generality the time for food seems usually a 

 matter of indifference, and they eat apparently with 

 little intermission both night and day. 



In manifold variety of form the mouth or feeding 

 apparatus of insects leaves that of all other animals 



