60 THE COMMON GNAT. 



fringed feelers, with which the head is provided, for 

 streamers, while the tail remains in the case as ballast. 

 This bark, though ingenious, is frail; and when even 

 a smart ripple of the water happens before the gnats be 

 wholly disentangled, the number which perishes is 

 quite incredible. When no such disaster happens, they 

 escape from the case, and play and buzz in countless 

 myriads. 



Of those that come to maturity, the natural life is 

 not supposed to exceed a month, and probably the 

 female begins to deposit her eggs before she has at- 

 tained the half of that age. We admire the art which 

 many birds show in the building of their nests ; and 

 the untaught geometry of the bees, that so construct 

 their cells as to combine the greatest possible strength 

 and economy ; but small and common as the gnat is, 

 and little as w r e heed her, she perhaps evinces more art 

 and science than any of them. The water is the only 

 element in which her young can subsist in the early 

 "stages of their growth ; and yet the heat of the sun and 

 the action of the atmosphere are necessary to the 

 hatching of her eggs. Instinctively she knows this 

 or which, when speaking of instinct, which is not a 

 matter of reasoning at all, but one of pure observation, 

 is the same she deposits her eggs on the water, and in 

 such a way as that they shall neither sink nor attract 

 the notice of enemies, by being attached to any bulky 

 substance. She alights upon a floating leaf, a bit of grass, 

 or any of those light substances which are found upon 

 the still water, \vhich she chooses. Projecting her hind- 

 most pair of legs backwards, and bringing them into 

 contact, she with her tail places one egg where they 



