12 IMPERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



to be seen, though the country usually abounds in such 

 a variety 3 . Major Moor, while stationed at Bombay, 

 as he was playing at chess one evening with a friend in 

 Old Woman's Island, near that place, witnessed an im- 

 mense flight of bugs (Geocoris(Z\ which were going west- 

 ward. They were so numerous as to cover every thing 

 in the apartment in which he was sitting. When staying 

 at Aldeburgh, on the eastern coast, I have, at certain 

 times, seen innumerable insects upon the beach close to 

 the waves, and apparently washed up by them. Though 

 wetted, they were quite alive. It is remarkable, that of 

 the emigrating insects here enumerated, the majority 

 for instance the lady-birds, saw-flies, dragon-flies, ground- 

 beetles, frog-hoppers, &c. are not usually social insects, 

 but seem to congregate, like swallows, merely for the 

 purpose of emigration. What incites them to this is one 

 of those mysteries of nature, which at present we cannot 

 penetrate. A scarcity of food urges the locusts to shift 

 their quarters ; and too confined a space to accommodate 

 their numbers occasions the bees to swarm : but neither 

 of these motives can operate in causing unsocial insects 

 to congregate. It is still more difficult to account for 

 the impulse that urges these creatures, with their filmy 

 wings and fragile form, to attempt to cross the ocean, 

 and expose themselves, one would think, to inevitable 

 destruction. Yet, though we are unable to assign the 

 cause of this singular instinct, some of the reasons which 

 induced the Creator to endow them with it may be con- 

 jectured. This is clearly one of the modes by which 

 their numbers are kept within due limits, as, doubtless, 

 the great majority of these adventurers perish in the 



a R. Milit. Chron. for March 1815, p. 452. 



