418 INSECTS. 



is loco.motive, springing about the water nearly in a similar 

 manner. When ready to give birth to the included gnat, which 

 usually happens in the space of three or four days, it rises to the 

 iurface, and the animal quickly emerges from its confinement. 



The gnat is supposed to feed both on animal and vegetable 

 juices, but perhaps chiefly on the latter ; since, as Reaumur ob- 

 serves, of the millions on millions which swarm in the marshy 

 regions where they are evolved, it can rarely fall to the lot of one 

 in a hundred to taste blood once in its life. 



The inconveniences, and even torments, experienced from these 

 insects, in some parts of the world, are hardly to be conceived by 

 those who inhabit the more favoured regions of the European con. 

 tinent. Instances have often been known to occur, of persons 

 whose faces or limbs have been thrown into such a severe inflam- 

 mation, as even to threaten the most serious consequences. 



A warm rainy season is most favourable to the evolution of 

 gnats ; and, in such summers, particular districts in most coun- 

 tries are occasionally pestered by their legions. In the Philoso- 

 phical Transactions, for the year 1767, we have an instance of this 

 kind in the neighbourhood of Oxford, communicated by the late 

 learned Mr.Swinton, of that University. 



Oxford, November 15, 1766. 

 " The gnats have been more numerous, as well as more noxi- 

 ous, here, during the months of July, August, and September, 

 1766, than perhaps they were ever known before in the memory of 

 man. So many myriads of them have sometimes occupied the 

 same part of the atmosphere, in contiguous bodies, that they have 

 resembled a very black cloud, greatly darkened the air, and 

 almost totally intercepted the solar rays. The repeated bites 

 likewise of these malignant insects have been so severe, that the 

 legs, arms, heads, and other parts affected by them, in many per- 

 sons, have been swelled to an enormous size. The colour also of 

 these parts, at the same time, was red and fiery, perfectly similar 

 to that of some of the most alarming inflammations/' 



Mr. Swinton adds, that the swarms of these animals were ob- 



ierved to ascend in columns of at least fifty or sixty feet in height. 



But of all the European nations, that of Lapland seems to be 



