54 MORE MINOR HORRORS 



nates is doubtful. Grassi says he never found 

 the male of A. macuUpennis in the winter, 

 only fertilised females. But as the warm 

 weather sets in the female generally becomes 

 active and bites, and the native American 

 Indians consider these elderly and famished 

 females give more annoyance than at any other 

 stage in the life-cycle of either sex. In the 

 warmer climate of Southern Italy they not 

 infrequently hibernate in grottos and caves. At 

 times they occur in such numbers that they 

 can be swept up. After depositing their eggs the 

 hibernating females probably die. This usually 

 happens in May. 



In the old days we used to collect gnats, 

 keep them in a receptacle unprovided with 

 any food, and when, after a couple of days, 

 they died of starvation we wrote poems or 

 essays on the ' Transitoriness of Life ' and 

 the ' Evanescence of Time.' 



The thin-winged gnats their transient time employ, 

 Reeling through sunbeams in a dance of joy. 



(Mrs. Norton.) 



Nowadays, we feed them. Bananas, 

 sweetened milk, pineapple, or almost any 

 other vegetable juice, is their diet, and in 

 captivity they will live for weeks. At Cam- 

 bridge in 1900 (July to August), Professor 

 Nuttall was successful in keeping females alive 



