110 



THE AMBKICAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



A POPLLAR DELUSION. 



This is a vulgar error. There is no known 

 insect tliat passes through all the stages ol' its 

 existence, from the egg to tlie perfect state, 

 in less than several weeks. The dilferent sj)e- 

 cies of flesh-tiies and hlow-Hies are familiar ex- 

 amples of such a rapiil development of life: and 

 we ean readily see why it should he so with 

 creatures snbsistingr upon substances that decay 

 so quickly as carrion. Even with Icaf-feedinu; 

 l;irv:c. ii lias been slinwn that the Colorado Po- 

 lalo-liug arri\('s at llic mature state in about a 

 month IVom the laying of the egg. But the 

 great majority of insects require nearly a year 

 to pass through all their stages; .several require 

 I wo or three years; and the Seventeen-year Lo- 

 cust {CiiMidu) actually requires tlie full period 

 of seventeen years to elapse before it becomes a 

 winged lly. 



There are, indeed. .-r\rrul Hies knciwn as 

 May-flies or Kphemcra— one of which will be 

 tound ligiircd in our tlrst number (page 0, Fig. 

 1 /,)_(!, at Ii\<> but a very short time, and a few 

 iif them only for ten or twelve hours, in the 

 winged slate. F.ut the larva- of llicsc very same 

 Hies have lived in the walcr for nearly a year, 

 before they left Ihcir native clcmcul and became 

 denizens of the air. 'I'lic proof of Ibi- fact, 

 which is notorious to all cnlonioloiii-l-. can be 

 at once made manife>t to every one. All these 

 May-flies drop their eggs in tlic water shortly 

 after they have assumed the winged state; and 

 of none ol them is there more than a single 

 brood in a single year. Now if it were possible 

 for any of them " to be born, live merrily, grow 

 old. and die. within the compass of twenty-four 

 hoiu-." a- we are told above, llien from these 

 eggs thus dropped in the water there would 

 surely sjiring np in a da.\ or two a M'cond brood 

 of winged :\Liy-tlies, and iVoiii the-i' in (he same 

 ))eriodof time there would lie generated a third 

 brood, and so on indelinitely all through the 

 summer, for at least a hundred successive gen- 

 erations. AVliereas the real truth of the matter 

 is, that there is but a single brood of each spe- 

 cies of May-tly in a single year, appearing in a 

 particular month, and not to be met with at any 

 other season of the year. For example, it is 

 recorded by European authors that a particular 

 kind {Ephemem Sirammerdiriwi} swarms regu- 

 larly every year at the mouth of the Rhine, but 

 only during lliree successive days, which usually 

 occiir about the feast of Olopbius and St. John. 



Itiuav perhaps be argued that, although the 



winged May-fly that flutters round in the air for 

 a few brief hours is developed from the body of 

 the larva that has been swimming about for 

 months ill ilie water, yet that the May-fly is a 

 distinct animal from the larva. But no such 

 hypothesis is tenable. Every frog is developed 

 from a tadpole, or " poUywog," as it is popu- 

 larly called; and the tadpole is as unlike the 

 frog in every respect as the larva of the May-fly 

 is unlike the May-fly itself. Shall we then ven- 

 ture to assert tliat the frog and tlie tadpole arc 

 distinct animals? Or that calves, lambs and 

 colts, arc distinct beings from cows, sheep and 

 horses? If so, then it w-ill also follow that 

 babies do not belong to the same species as 

 grown men and women ; although in reality the 

 baby is as much the larva of the full grown hu- 

 man being, as the tadpole is of the frog, the calf 

 of the eou. tlie lamb of the shee].. and the colt 

 of the hoi-e. 



Many \ ears ago Dr. Franklin i.nbli.-hed an 

 address, full of very instructive i)hilo.sophy, 

 which lie put into the mouth of an " ancient 

 Epiiemera," that had lived to the extreme old 

 age of four hundred and twenty minutes. As 

 with much of the popular literature of the day. 

 his moral reflections are admirable, but his 

 enlomology is naught. 



THE SqUIRUEL BOT. 



In regard to the mutilation of the generative 

 organs of American squirrels, alluded to in the 

 January numberofyour paper (p. 80), allow mc 

 to make a few remarks. The emasculation of 

 the (;i:iy Si|iiiiiel (Sciitrus raroluieiiKin) by our 

 common lied Squirrel (.S'. /(«<?.w»/».s-) has been 

 almost universally advocated by old hunters in 

 this regitm from my earliest boyhood. But they 

 always alleged that it was confined to the (irays, 

 and was perpetrated by the Beds. My intelli- 

 gent friend, Judge Libliart, of Marietta, Pa., 

 however, although he had shot emasculated 

 sijecimens of these, was not prepared to unite 

 with other Inniters as to the cause. 



About fifteen years ago, I captured a large, 



short, thick-bodied, two-winged fly, sitting on a 



I fence stake about half a mile from a wood. As 



1 dipterous insects were not my specialty, this 



j individual renniinedalong time in my collection 



i unnamed. About seven years ago, ^Iv. fJeo. 



I Hcnsel, a naturalist o(* this city, captured an 



I apparently sickly Striped Squirrel (Sclurus 



\ sfrialus), which he brought home and confined 



in a cage. For some time this animal refused to 



iiarlukeof its usual food; indeed il did iiol seem 



