INSECTS IN VISIBLE NATURE 123 



But wild insects ! There is the turnip-fly, and the 

 Hessian-fly, and botfly, and all sorts of worrying, and 

 blood-sucking, and disease-carrying flies, in and out of 

 houses; and gnats and midges, and fleas in seaside 

 lodgings, and wasps, and beetles, such as the cockchafer 

 and blackbeetle are not these all pests? This is the 

 indoor mind its view of external nature which makes 

 the society of indoor people unutterably irksome to me, 

 unless (it will be understood) when I meet them in 

 a house, in a town, where they exist in some sort 

 of harmony, however imperfect, with their artificial 

 environment. 



I am not concerned now with the question of the 

 place which insects occupy in the scale of being and 

 their part in the natural economy, but solely with their 

 effect on the nature-lover with or without the " curious 

 mind " hi fact, with insects as part of this visible and 

 audible world. Without them, this innumerable com- 

 pany that each " deep in his day's employ " are ever 

 moving swiftly or slowly about me, their multitudinous 

 small voices united into one deep continuous JMian 

 sound, it would indeed seem as if some mysterious 

 malady or sadness had come upon Nature. Rather 

 would I feel them alive, teasing, stinging, and biting 

 me ; rather would I walk in all green and flowery places 

 with a cloud of gnats and midges ever about me. Nor 

 do I wish to write now about insect life generally : my 

 sole aim in this chapter is to bring before the reader 

 some of the most notable species seen in this place 



