CHAPTER XII 



Midges Effect of frost and damp upon them And upon caterpillars, and 

 other insects and animals Blood-worms and Water- worms Screws 

 Gnats and Mosquitoes Midgy Smoke-like columns Swallows and 

 other birds flying high Weather prognostics. 



UNDER the shelter of the fir trees little crowds of Midges 

 are dancing in the sun, and a stray Tortoiseshell Butterfly, 

 flitting past, makes us pause to wonder where such frail 

 creatures can have weathered the recent storms, or how it is 

 that the frost does not congeal the thin blood in their 

 slender bodies. So long ago as 1776, Gilbert White was 

 puzzled by this same question, for commenting on the great 

 frost of that year, he writes that two days after the thaw had 

 set in, swarms of little insects were flying as though they 

 had felt no frost, and adds, "Why the juices in the small 

 bodies and smaller limbs of such minute beings are not 

 frozen is a matter of curious inquiry." Many of the 

 midges which we see abroad in winter have, no doubt, been 

 recently hatched from their pupae, but that, of course, does 

 not help us very much in the present connection, for, in the 

 pupal state, they might be presumed to be as susceptible to 

 cold as at any other time. Yet it is well known that a 

 large proportion of insects of all kinds pass the winter as 

 pupae, often without the slightest protection, as witness, for 

 example, the chrysalides of the common white butterflies 

 which may be found quite naked, and exposed, on the sides 

 of rails, or walls. On the other hand, plenty of mature 

 insects may always be found also sheltering against tree 

 trunks and in a hundred other places, at any season of the 

 year, be the frost never so keen. Without going to the 

 Arctic regions, where many insects abound that in the 

 ordinary routine have to withstand temperatures many 

 degrees below zero, we have ample evidence in this country 



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