260 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
the substance of this essay at p. 418 of his ‘Treatise on 
Insects Injurious to Vegetation.’ This second account, with 
some abbreviations and modifications, has been adopted by 
all subsequent writers; and its chief points are incorporated 
in the present memoir, not, however, unadvisedly, or without 
a careful study of the insect in a state of nature. I have also 
to acknowledge the great assistance I have received from 
Mr. Edward A. Fitch, one of the best observers of insect life- 
history that ever lived, and one who has laboured, and is still 
labouring, most efficiently in the elucidation of our British 
oak-galls. 
In June the mother-fly emerges from the earth in which 
she had voluntarily buried herself. Her first thought, like 
that of our own female relatives, is matrimony ; and doubtless 
her powers of attraction, as with us, are taxed to the utter- 
most; but in what manner they are exercised philosophers 
have failed to discover. Her second thought, or instinct, or 
duty, is preparing for a family. A word as to her personal . 
appearance: she is always in mourning; even before matri- 
mony she wears the sable garment of widowhood; her head, 
antennz, body and legs are almost entirely clothed in black ; 
her wings, otherwise colourless, wear a blackish shade across 
their middle. Her native tree in this country is the sloe. By 
beating a sloe-bush, at the beginning of June, into a net or 
umbrella, after the manner practised by entomologists when 
thrashing for caterpillars, you may obtain some of these little 
black, and seemingly lifeless, creatures, which are about the 
size of a grain of wheat. If they fall into the umbrella— 
held of course upside down—they will roll over and over to 
the bottom of the concavity, and there lie perfectly motion- 
less; of course their object is to assume the semblance of 
death, so as to deceive the uninitiated. A great number of 
insects have this habit of feigning death, evidently with the 
object of rendering their appearance unattractive, and them- 
selves unrecognisable to those other insects, or animals of 
any kind, which make living insects their customary food. 
As though purposely to aid in this life-preserving, and there- 
fore very excusable, deception, their bodies are so fashioned 
that by bending their heads downwards beneath their breasts, 
pressing their antenne, legs and wings closely against the 
body, and resolutely abstaining from all movement, the whole 
ee 
