188 INSECT LEAPERS. 



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 

 a part near the tail with its hooked jaws, and, after strongly 

 contracting itself from a circle into an oval, throws itself with 

 a jerk into a straight line ; an action which effects the leap. 



There is a certain fish,* which, when tired of swimming in 

 its native element, is said to take the air by ascending trees. 

 This climbing fish must be looked on, we should think, as a 

 very odd fish among his finny fellows, on account of the 

 strangeness of such proceeding, but the oddest part of it, to 

 us, must appear, while unexplained, the power of the legless 



* Perca scandens. Note in Sharon Turner's ' Sacred History of the World.' 



