STRAW- COLOURED GNAT. 57 



folio plates entirely devoted to it. This, however, is very 

 different from the species exhibited in our drawings. 

 Indeed, the larva and pupa of the common gnat are too 

 opaque and uninteresting to be of much value as micro- 

 scopic objects, except in their transfiguration. 



A curious circumstance attends the observation of this 

 insect : so rapid is its locomotion, that it torments the eye 

 while attempting to delineate it, presenting alternately 

 its head and tail to the observer. This it effects by bend- 

 ing itself laterally into a circular form, and suddenly 

 whisking round in the opposite direction to that in which 

 it had just bent itself. 



In the dark ages of the world, when man considered it 

 beneath him to be watchful of, or attentive to, the work- 

 ings of Nature, and when superstition exercised an undue 

 bias over his mind, the new phases which a creature as- 

 sumed were conceived to be miraculous conversions, alto- 

 gether enveloped in mystery. Now-a-days, that his zeal 

 for investigation has led him on to a greatly extended 

 survey of Nature, and to a more minute acquaintance 

 with her operations than his ancestors were wont 

 to possess not but that the ultimate causes to which 

 those operations are subservient remain as much a mys- 

 tery as they ever were his pride and arrogance would 

 instigate him to get rid of every thing approaching to 

 difficulty in the whole routine of creation. He would 

 tell you that the metamorphoses we observe in insects, 

 like those we have been describing, by which a living 

 creature, an inhabitant of the water, whose life depends 



