FOOD OF INSECTS. 221 



As to their time of feeding, insects maybe divided into three great 

 classes : the day-feeders, the night-feeders, and those which feed indif- 

 ferently at all times. You have been apt to think, I dare say, that when 

 the sun's warmer beams have waked the insect youth, and 



" Ten thousand forms, ten thousand different tribes, 

 People the blaze," 



you see before you the whole insect world. You are not aware that a 

 host as numerous shun the glare of day, and, like the votaries of fashion, 

 rise not from their couch until their more vulgar brethren have retired to 

 rest. While the painted butterfly, the " fervent bees," and the quivering 

 nations of flies, which sport 



" Thick in yon stream of light, a thousand ways, 

 Upward and downward thwarting and convolved," 



love to bask in the sun's brightest rays, and search for their food amidst 

 his noontide fervour, an immense multitude stir not before the sober time 

 of twilight, and eat only when night has overshadowed the earth. Then 

 only the vast tribe of moths quit their hiding-places ; the " shard-born * 

 beetle with his drowsy hum," accompanied by numerous others of his 

 order, sallies forth ; the airy gnat-flies institute their dances ; and the soli- 

 tary spider stretches his net. All these retire into concealment at the 

 approach of light. Some few larva? (Agrotis exclamationis y &c.) have simi- 

 lar habits, and those of one singular genus before adverted to (Nycterobius) 

 are remarkable for providing in the night a store of food which they con- 

 sume in the day: but to the generality of these the period of feeding is 

 indifferent, and most of them seem to eat with little intermission night and 

 day. 



Insects, like other animals, take in their food by the mouth (in Chermes 

 and Coccus, indeed, the rostrum seems to be, but really is not, inserted in 

 the breast, between the fore-legs) ; but there is one exception to this rule. 

 The singular Uropoda vegetans, which is such a plague to some beetles, 

 derives its nutriment from them by means of a filiform pedicle or umbilical 

 cord attached to its anus ; and what increases the singularity, sometimes 

 several of these mites form a kind of chain, of which the first only is fixed 



1 In the controversy between the commentators on Shakespeare as to whether 

 shard* means wing-cases, dung, or a. fragment of earthen-ware, and whether born 

 should be spelled with or without the e, it might have thrown some weight into the 

 scale of those who contend for the orthography adopted above, and that the meaning 

 of shard in this place is dung, if they had been aware that the beetle ( Geotrupes 

 starcorarius) is actually born amongst dung, and nowhere else: and that no beetle 

 which makes a hum in flying can with propriety be said, as Dr. Johnson has inter- 

 preted the epithet in his" Dictionary, " to be born amidst broken stones or pots." 

 That Shakespeare alluded to the Beetle, and not to the Cockchafer {Melolontha vul- 

 garis), seems clear from the fact of the former being to be heard in all places almost 

 every fine evening in the summer, while the latter is common only in particular 

 districts, and at one period of the year. S. 



* Sharn is the common name of cow-dung in the North ; therefore Shakespeare 

 probably wrote s^arw-born. ( Mr. M acLeay. ) See for various authorities on this 

 question a note by Mr. Bennett in the Zoological Journal, v. 198. ; and Mr. Patter- 

 son's " Letters on the Natural History of the Insects mentioned in Shakespeare's 

 Plays." 



