CLEAR WINGS. 35 



They have long and thin antennae, 

 Gently tapering to the summit ; 

 Wings transparent and loud humming, 

 Fore shanks onespurred at the summit, 

 And the feet are all fivejointed ; 

 Body uniformly rounded, 

 Not nipped in and slenderwaisted ; 

 And the tail is like an augur, 

 Formed for boring into timber ; 

 If you ask me wherefore boring. 

 What its use and what its object, 

 I should quickly give this reason. 

 That the fly may safe deposit 

 Eggs in every excavation. 

 Eggs from which the infant larvae 

 Soon emerging bore still deeper, 

 Deeper still into the timber. 

 Let us call them Scricina. 



All the oakapples and inkgalls, 

 All the cherrygalls and uutgalls, 

 All the bitter Dead Sea apples, 

 All the beautiful oakspangles, 

 And those freaks of sportive Nature 

 Called by children wild mossroses. 

 Found in summer in the hedgerows ; 

 All these and a hundred others 

 Quite as strange, and some far stranger. 

 Are the work of puny insects, 



