200 INSECT MISCELLANIES. 



hour before sun-set, he was in the garden of Wad- 

 ham College, when he saw six columns of them 

 ascending 1 from the boughs of an apple-tree, some 

 in a perpendicular, and others in an oblique direc- 

 tion, to the height of fifty or sixty feet. Their bite 

 was attended with violent inflammation, and when 

 one was killed after it had bit, the blood contained 

 in it would cover three or four inches of wall *. 

 About thirty years before this, vast columns of gnats 

 were seen to rise in the air from Salisbury Cathe- 

 dral, resembling, at a distance, columns of smoke, 

 which made the people imagine the edifice was 

 on firef. At Sagan, in Silesia, in July, 1812, a 

 similar occurrence gave rise in like manner to an 

 alarm that the church was on fire|. The poet 

 Spenser says, the Irish " goe all naked except a 

 mantle, which is a fit house for an outlaw a meet 

 bed for a rebel and an apt cloak for a thiefe. It 

 coucheth him strongly against the gnats, which, in 

 that country, doe more to annoy the naked rebels, 

 and doe more sharply wound them, than all their 

 enemies' swords and speares, which can seldom 

 come nigh them . J) Elsewhere he gives another 

 picture of the Irish gnats : 



" When a swarme of gnats at eventide 



Out of the fennes of Allan doe arise, 



Their murmuring smal trumpets sownden wide, 



Whiles in the air their clustering army flies, 



That as a cloud does seem to dim the skies ; 



Ne man nor beast may rest or take repast, 



For their sharp wounds and noyous injuries, 



Till the fierce northern wind with blustering blast 



Doth blow them quite away and in the ocean cast ||." 



It is worthy of remark that a numerous family 



* Phil. Trans. 1767, pp. 111118. 



t Bingley, Anim. Biog. iv. 205. 



J Germar, Mag. der Entomol. i. 137. 



Spenser's View of Ireland. j| Faerie Queene. 



