602 INSECTS AT HOME. 



insect in a room, but it is marvenou.-ly beautiful under the 

 microscope, and sliould be examined both with direct and 

 transmitted light, and with a succession of powers, beginning 

 at the lowest and ending at the highest, so as to gain its 

 beauties of detail by degrees. The antenna of tlie male, for 

 example, which is represented on Woodcut LXIX. Fig. A, is a 

 wonderfully beautiful object. There are fourteen joints, and 

 each joint is furnished with a whorl of long hair, disposed as 

 seen in the illustration. The same portion of the female has 

 the whorl of hair so short as to be invisible without the aid of 

 a lens. Then again, the beak, the wings, the limbs, and the 

 body generally are studded with beautiful scales, resembling in 

 form those of the Lepidoptera, but more deeply grooved, and 

 having the ridges prolonged beyond the end, so as to form a 

 row of little spikes. These scales are so plentiful, so easily 

 detached from the insect, and so readily recognised, that if a 

 Gnat should have been kept in a box in which various other 

 insects have been placed, the microscope will detect upon all 

 the later comers some of the scales of their predecessor. 



Tlicse scales give to the insect a splendour of colouring 

 which cannot be appreciated until the microscope is brought to 

 bear on it, and which entirely baffles any power of description.* 

 So I recommend my readers to look for themselves, and to 

 place the first Gnat that they catch under a micro-scope, taking 

 care to concentrate upon it as brilliant a light as they can 

 obtain. When they have done this, they will begin to realise 

 some of the wonders of Fairyland, and to see actually before 

 their eyes splendours which the most daring fairy tale has but 

 faintly pictured. Dull and colourless as the Gnat may appear 

 to the unaided eye, it has only to be placed under the revealing 

 glass of the microscope to blaze out in a magnificence which 

 would pale all the fabled glories of Aladdin's fairy palace. I 

 have no doubt that all this splendour is perfectly visible to the 

 eyes of the insects themselves, and that the beauties which are 

 hidden from us until we have recourse to artificial vision, are 

 seen and appreciated by the insects whose bodies they adorn. 



To descend to more prosaic details — though after all, the 

 history of every insect is really a poem — we must bear in mind 

 that, though both sexes partake of tliis splendid apparel, tlie 

 male does not possess the skin-piercing lancets with which the 



