34 ODD HOURS WITH NATURE 



to present a general resemblance to the familiar 

 daddy-long-legs very much reduced. It has long 

 legs, a thin body, a relatively large, shall I say, 

 chest, and a small head. The head has to casual 

 observation the usual equipment of mouth and 

 sucking parts. Let the examination be pushed 

 further, and it will be found that in the body there 

 is something distinctly resembling the usual equip- 

 ment of digestive organs. But for all that, the 

 midge never eats, and therefore it never digests 

 any food. Never eats ! How, then, does it live? 

 The truth is it never eats as a midge. By far the 

 greater part of its life is spent at the bottom of 

 water as a larva, and in that state it does " a 

 power of eating." But when it emerges its sole 

 business is to find a mate and reproduce its kind, 

 and in order that it may not go foraging after 

 provender it does not really need, when it emerges 

 in the perfect state its mouth is soldered up. 



Probably a long way back in the history of 

 the family our innocent midge was a bloodsucker. 

 The biting midge, better designated as the gnat, is 

 a not remote relative, and its armoury is one of 

 most ingenious things in nature, being a complex 

 arrangement of lancet, fretsaw, and pump. For 

 the purpose of piercing skin and sucking blood 

 it would be impossible to improve upon it, and 

 everybody who has passed a summer day in the 

 parts of the country where swampy ground occurs 

 knows that its appetite is as keen as its weapons. 

 Yet to the vast majority of blood-sucking gnats 

 their weapons and the desire to use them repre- 

 sent in all probability nothing but an exquisitely 



