172 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



were males ; and certainly courtship between the sexes 

 may often be looked for in vain, though we pass from 

 party to party of gnats along the side of a sunny hedge. 

 Dancers are constantly falling out of the dance and 

 sitting on the grasses or the ground, to resume after 

 a few minutes' rest. So it goes on for hours; as 

 late as six on a February evening I have seen gnats 

 dancing. Might not utility's end be served easily 

 and surely enough without all these hours of mazy 

 motion ? This is a doubt which will present itself 

 whenever I watch the gnat parties. It persists, too, 

 in presenting itself when I watch the toss and swing 

 of ghost moths, though there courtship is oftener 

 noted than among the gnats. And when a gnat 

 keeps up his dance till near twilight, with no com- 

 panions, can we believe that mateship is the only 

 motive ? 



After all, love of amusement, pleasure for pleasure's 

 sake, exists among various mammals, and so I 

 strongly incline to believe now among birds ; why 

 not among insects? Utility is dominant, no doubt, 

 with all life, the master magnet by which men, in 

 the lump, are only a little less powerfully drawn 

 than the rest of creation. But we need not in 

 thought imprison the insects or birds still closer in 

 a Coke-town of utility than Nature herself keeps 

 them. The honey-bee may never indulge in " idle 

 pleasure," but I am not sure of the dancing gnat, 

 the butterfly hi its ecstasy of sun, the moth in the 



