THE FAERY YEAR 



cannot tell. Food brings together the finch flocks, 

 but not gnat and psychoda. 



Long ago Kirby and Spence noticed the gnat 

 column and the psychoda, and charming and refined 

 were their studies of these insects. Once or twice 

 they were dazzled by a spectacle of gnats, which by 

 a wondrous effect of sunshine were much magnified 

 and so glorified that they seemed hardly like matter 

 even in its least gross form. Sometimes a large 

 gnat column driven by a pufF of air exactly re- 

 sembles a sheet of finest raindrops whirled by the 

 wind. I fancy I have seen the same thing happen 

 to a little cloud of psychodae. The rise and fall of 

 the gnats in column form is not, by the way, quite 

 vertical. I should say that commonly the gnat rises 

 and falls at an angle of about seventy-five. During 

 these movements the gnat's wings by no means 

 always work at a high pace ; they may be slow 

 compared with the intense beat of the wings of the 

 hoverer flies of summer. 



" Transparent forms, too fine for mortal sight, 

 Their fluid bodies half dissolved in light, 

 Loose to the wind their airy garments flew, 

 Their glittering textures of the filmy dew." 



This might apply to dance of gnats in the sun, 

 or of spinners by the river. Kirby and Spence 

 thought that Pope had the gnat dance in mind when 

 he wrote the lines ; I fancy he was thinking of 

 spinners or May-flies in imago dress. The dun 

 becomes a spinner after it has gone through its last 

 slight moult. During a hatch of duns 1 have often 



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