10 IMPERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



tained ; that the Coccinellae attempt it, is evident from 

 their alighting upon ships at sea, as I have witnessed 

 myself. This appears clearly to have been the case with 

 another emigrating insect, the saw-fly (Athalia?} of the 

 turnip (which, though so mischievous, appears never to 

 have been described; it is nearly related to A. Centi- 

 folice) a . It is the general opinion in Norfolk, Mr. Mar- 

 shall informs us b , that these insects come from over sea. 

 A farmer declared he saw them arrive in clouds so as to 

 darken the air ; the fishermen asserted that they had re- 

 peatedly seen flights of them pass over their heads when 

 they were at a distance from land; and on the beach 

 and cliffs they were in such quantities, that they might 

 have been taken up by shovels-full. Three miles in-land 

 they were described as resembling swarms of bees. This 

 was in August 1782. Unentomological observers, such 

 as farmers and fishermen, might easily mistake one kind 

 of insect for another ; but supposing them correct, the 

 swarms in,. question might perhaps have passed from 

 Lincolnshire to Norfolk. Meinecken tells us, that he 

 once saw in a village in Anhalt, on a clear day, about 

 four in the afternoon, such a cloud of dragon-flies (Li- 

 bellulina) as almost concealed the sun, and not a little 

 alarmed the villagers, under the idea that they were lo- 

 custs c : several instances are given by Rosel of similar 

 clouds of these insects having been seen in Silesia and 

 other districts' 1 ; and Mr. Woolnough of Hollesley in 

 Suffolk, a most attentive observer of nature, once wit- 

 nessed such an army of the smaller dragon-flies (Agrion) 

 flying in-land from the sea, as to cast a slight shadow 



a Fn. Germ. Init. xlix. 18. b Phllos. Trans. Ixxiii. 217. 



c Naturforsch. vi. 110. d ii. 13,5. 



