The Natural History of Selborne 431 



CIMEX LINEARIS. 



AUGUST 12, 1775. Cimices lineares are now in high copulation on 

 ponds and pools. The females, who vastly exceed the males in 

 bulk, dart and shoot along on the surface of the water with the 

 males on their backs. When a female chooses to be disengaged, 

 she rears, and jumps, and plunges, like an unruly colt ; the lover 

 thus dismounted, soon finds a new mate. The females, as fast as 

 their curiosities are satisfied, retire to another part of the lake, 

 perhaps to deposit their foetus in quiet ; hence the sexes are found 

 separate, except where generation is going on. From the multitude 

 of minute young of all gradations of sizes, these insects seem with- 

 out doubt to be viviparous. WHITE. 



PHAL^NA QUERCUS. 



MOST of our oaks are naked of leaves, and even the Holt in 

 general, having been ravaged by the caterpillars of a small Phaltena, 

 which is of a pale yellow colour. These insects, though a feeble 

 race, yet, from their infinite numbers, are of wonderful effect, being 

 able to destroy the foliage of whole forests and districts. At this 

 season they leave their aurelia, and issue forth in their fly-state, 

 swarming and covering the trees and hedges. 



In a field at Greatham I saw a flight of swifts busied in catching 

 their prey near the ground, and found they were hawking after 

 these Phal*en<. The aureli<e of this moth is shining and as black 

 as jet, and lies wrapped up in a leaf of the tree, which is rolled 

 round it, and secured at the ends by a web, to prevent the maggot 

 from falling out. WHITE. 



I suspect that the insect here meant is not the Phalxna guercus, 

 but the Phal<ena viridata, concerning which I find the following 

 note in my "Naturalist's Calendar " for the year 1785. 



