EPHEMERA. 



155 



August ; and Rennie speaks of having noticed them on the 

 Rhine in the same month of 1829, when appearing in the 

 evening all were dead before sunrise. He describes them as 

 " so thickly strewn in the great square at Wiesbaden, that it 

 seemed as if a shower of snow had fallen in the night, their 

 wings being white, and about the size of a broad snow-flake." 1 

 The remarkable brevity of the Ephemera' t life seems to have 

 attracted the notice of the ancients, Aristotle speaking of little 

 animals on the river Hyparis which live but for a day : those 

 (he observes) among them which die at eight in the morning 

 die in their youth ; those which live to see h' ve in the after- 

 noon, in their old age. 



1 Insect Transformations, p. 316. 



