INSECT LEAPERS. 351 



instance, as aquatic beetles are usually provided with a pair 

 of hinder legs, long, strong, rather flattened, and densely 

 fringed with hair, assisted by which they cut the fluid element 

 in all directions, darting about, rising to the surface, or diving 

 to the bottom with the utmost rapidity. 



The above are among the principal of those insect move- 

 ments which resemble the common motions, on land, in air, and 

 in water, of other animals ; but the latter exhibit some of a 

 more peculiar character, wherewith insects also are endowed, 

 besides others which would seem common to no other creatures 

 but themselves. 



The serpent, deriving a false consequence from its very sen- 

 tence of degradation, is said to have partly owed its deification 

 to the power, once looked on as miraculous, of crawling with- 

 out legs. This attribute of once mysterious motion is shared 

 by many insects, which in their state of larva are legless, but 

 can glide onwards, and sometimes with rapidity, not pushed 

 along like the serpent by the points of the ribs, but by alternate 

 contraction and extension of the rings of the body. 



The wonderful leaps of the salmon up cataracts (which 

 these alone enable it to ascend), if, as has been stated, per- 

 formed with tail in mouth, are imitated in manner as well as 

 magnitude by an insect leaper, of which, as of the salmon, 

 it may be descriptively affirmed that it is " at once both bow 

 and arrow." This little animal, which is the legless larva of a 

 minute and pretty fly, and not, as is popularly (supposed, a 

 mere offspring of decay, is none other than the cheese-hopper, 

 a very curious and admirably constructed creature, though to 

 none, save to entomologists and certain epicures, an object of 

 admiration. Swammerdam saw one of these legless leapers 

 spring out of a box six inches deep, or twenty-four times the 

 length of its own body. To compass leaps like this and others 

 more stupendous, the saltatory performer erects itself on its 

 tail, which is furnished with two projections that enable it to 

 maintain its balance. It then bends itself into a circle, catches 



