22 ON ENTOMOLOGY. 



at length coming on, he was compelled to leave this interesting scene ; 

 but to prevent the escape of the insects he had the tub covered with a 

 cloth. The violence of the rain ceased in about half an hour, when he 

 returned to the garden, and as soon as the cloth was removed from the 

 tub, he perceived that the number of Flies was prodigiously augmented, 

 and continued to increase for some time as he stood watching them. 

 Many flew away, and many more were drowned ; but the number which 

 had already undergone their transformation from the earth in the tub 

 would have been sufficient to fill it, exclusively of crowds of others 

 which the light had attracted from a distance. He again spread the cloth 

 over the tub, and the light was held above it, immediately the cloth was 

 almost concealed by the vast multitudes which alighted upon it. What 

 he had observed, however, at the tub, was nothing to the scene now 

 exhibited on the banks of the river, to which he was again attracted by 

 the exclamations of his gardener. The countless numbers, he says, of 

 Ephemera which swarmed over the water can neither be conceived nor 

 expressed. When snow falls thickest, and in the largest flakes, the air 

 is never so completely full of them as that which we witnessed filled 

 with Ephemera. I had scarcely remained a few minutes in one place 

 when the step on which I stood was covered in every part with their 

 bodies, from two to four inches in depth. Near the lowest step, a sur- 

 face of water of five or six feet dimensions every way, was entirely 

 covered with a thick layer of them ; and those which the stream swept 

 away were more than replaced by the multitudes that were continually 

 falling, and I was repeatedly compelled to abandon my station from not 

 being able to bear the shower of insects which, not falling perpendicu- 

 larly like rain, struck me incessantly, and in a manner extremely un- 

 comfortable, pelting against every part of my face, and filling my eyes, 

 nose, and mouth almost to suffocation. On this occasion it was no 

 pleasant part to hold the light, for our torch-bearer had his clothes 

 covered with insects in a few moments, which rushed in from all quar- 

 ters to overwhelm him. The light of the torch gave origin to a spectacle 

 which enchanted every one who beheld it, and altogether different from 

 a meteorological shower even the most stupid and unobserving of my 

 domestics were never satisfied with gazing at it. No armillary sphere 

 was ever formed of so many circular zones in every possible direction, 

 having the light for their common centre. Their number seemed to be 

 infinite, crossing each other in all directions and in every imaginable 

 degree and inclination, all of which were more or less oblique. Each 

 of these zones was composed of an unbroken string of Ephemera, which 

 followed each other close in the same line, as if they had been tied 

 together head and tail, resembling a piece of silver ribbon deeply in- 

 dented on its edges, and consisting of equal triangles placed end to end j 

 so that the angles of those that followed were supported by the base 

 of those which preceded, the whole moving round with incredible 

 velocity. This spectacle was caused by the wings of the insects, which 



