OBSERVATIONS ON INSECTS. 307 



HUMMING IN THE AIR. There is a natural occurrence to 

 be met with upon the highest part of our down in hot summer 

 days, which always amuses me much, without giving me any 

 satisfaction with respect to the cause of it ; and that is, a loud 

 audible humming of bees in the air, though not one insect is 

 to be seen.* This sound is to be heard distinctly the whole 

 common through, from the Money-dells, to Mr White's avenue 

 gate. Any person would suppose that a large swarm of bees 

 was in motion, and playing about over his head. This noise 

 was heard last week, on June twenty-eighth. 

 Resounds the living surface of the ground, 

 Nor undelightful is the ceaseless hum 



To him who muses at noon. 



Thick in yon stream of light, a thousand ways, 

 Upward and downward, thwarting and convolved, 

 The quivering nations sport. 



THOMSON'S Seasons, 



CHAFFERS. Cock-chaffers seldom abound oftener than 

 once in three or four years ; when they swarm, they deface 

 the trees and hedges. Whole woods of oaks are stripped bare 

 by them.f 



Chaffers are eaten by the turkey, the rook, and the house- 

 sparrow. 



The scarab&us solstitialls first appears about June twenty-six : 

 they are very punctual in their coming out every year. They 

 are a small species, about half the size of the May-chaffer, and 

 are known in some parts by the name of the fern-chaffer, j 



* This sound does not proceed from bees, as our author supposes, but 

 from the common gnat (culex pipiens. ) We particularly noticed this in 

 August, 1832, in a lane which leads from the back of Warriston Crescent, 

 to the Newhaven road. On the third, the air was very hot, and the 

 sound proceeded from the top of some high trees. Next day we passed 

 the same road ; the air was more cold and somewhat moist, when these 

 gnats were sporting in the sunbeams, close to the top of a hedge, which 

 was not more than four feet high. This mighty congregation of gnats 

 formed a lengthened column of two hundred yards, by about a yard in 

 breadth, and two yards in depth ; their numbers we believe to have been 

 greater than there have been human beings on our globe, from the creation 

 to the present time. ED. 



f Respect being had to the size of the cock-chaffer, it is six times stronger 

 than a horse ; and if the elephant, as Linnaeus observed, was strong in 

 proportion to the stag-beetle, it would be able to pull up rocks by the root, 

 and to level mountains ; were the lion and tiger as strong and as swift 

 for their magnitude, as the cicindela and the beetle, nothing could escape 

 them by precaution, or withstand them by strength. ED. 



f A singular circumstance relative to the cock-chaffer, or, as it is called 

 here, the May-bug, (scarabceus melolontha,) happened this year (1800.) 



