104 COLLECTION AND PRESERVATION OF INSECTS. 



ought to be carefully noted, for although it may not be ser- 

 viceable at the moment when noticed, it may afterwards 

 become valuable, and serve to illustrate some important 

 point in the natural history of insects. 



Diptera, or flies and gnats, seem to be inhabitants of 

 every place under the sun ; they settle on man, horses, 

 and cattle, to suck their blood ; on all kinds of flowers to 

 eat their pollen or extract their honey ; on leaves either 

 to sun themselves or to sip the honey-dew ; on all kinds 

 of putrefying substances, either for the sake of food or as 

 a dwelling for their young ; palings, walls, trunks of trees, 

 blades of grass and corn, are very favorite resorts ; and 

 lastly, they seem to have made themselves perfectly at 

 home in our houses, parading our windows, roosting on 

 our ceilings, feasting on our sweets, and performing aerial 

 gambols in our drawing-rooms. It seems idle to attempt 

 to give instructions as to the finding and capturing ani- 

 mals of so common occurrence : the sweeping net will be 

 found most useful for those frequenting grass, and the for- 

 ceps for nearly all other situations in which they may 

 occur. 



The class Hymenoptera includes bees, wasps, sand- 

 wasps, ants, ichneumons, and saw-flies : bees are to be 

 taken in great abundance on sunny sandy banks in spring, 

 and on flowers in summer and autumn ; the same situations 

 may be searched with advantage for wasps, sand-wasps, 

 &c. : ichneumons and saw-flies will generally be found on 

 leaves and flowers ; and ants on the ground, and on herbs 

 and shrubs. All kinds of Hymenoptera may be occa- 

 sionally beaten from trees and shrubs into the clap-net, but 

 the best instrument for this class is the forceps. There is 

 one tribe of minute parasitical Hymenoptera called Chal- 

 cidites, the species of which are to be obtained by sweeping 

 grass, &c., under oak trees, with a muslin sweeping-net ; 



