The Zoologist — August, 1869. 1787 



the sea has not been ascertained : that the Coccinellae attempt it is 

 evident fiom their alighting upon ships at sea, as I have witnessed 

 myself. This appears clearly to have been the case with another 

 emigrating insect, the sawfly of the turnip (Athalia Spinarum). It is 

 the general opinion in Norfolk, Mr. Marshall informs us, that these 

 insects come from over the sea. A farmer declared he saw them 

 arrive in clouds so as to darken the air ; the fishermen asserted that 

 they had repeatedly seen flights of them pass over their heads when 

 they were at a distance from land ; and on the beach and cliffs they 

 were in such quantities, that they might have been taken up by 

 shovels full. Three miles inland they were described as resembling 

 swarms of bees. This was in August, 1782. Unenlomological ob- 

 servers, such as farmers and fishermen, might easily mistake one kind 

 of insect for another ; but supposing them correct, the swarms in 

 question might perhaps have passed from Lincolnshire to Norfolk. 

 Meinecken tells us, that he once saw in a village in Anhalt, on a clear 

 day, about four in the afternoon, such a cloud of dragon-flies as almost 

 concealed the sun, and not a little alarmed the villagers, under the 

 idea that they were locusts ; several instances are given by Roesel of 

 similar clouds of these insects having been seen in Silesia and other 

 districts ; and Mr. Woolnough, of Hollesley, in Suffolk, a most atten- 

 tive observer of nature, once witnessed such an army of the smaller 

 dragon-flies flying inland from the sea, as to cast a slight shadow over 

 a field of four acres as they passed. Professor Walch states, that one 

 night about eleven o'clock, sitting in his study, his attention was 

 attracted by what seemed the pelting of hail against his window, 

 which surprising him by its long continuance he opened the window, 

 and found the noise was occasioned by a flight of the froth frog-hopper, 

 which entered the room in such numbers as to cover the table. From 

 this circumstance and this continuance of the pelting which lasted at 

 least half an hour, an idea may be formed of the vast host of this 

 insect passing over : it passed from east to west ; and as his window 

 faced the south, they only glanced against it obliquely. He after- 

 wards witnessed, in August, a similar emigration of myriads of a kind 

 of ground-beetle [Amara]. Another writer in the same work, 

 H. Kapp, observed on a calm sunny day a prodigious flight of the 

 noxious cabbage butterfly [Pieris Brassicce], which passed from 

 north-east to south-west, and lasted two hours. Kalm saw these last 

 insects midway in the British Channel. Lindley, a writer in the 

 ' Royal Military Chronicle,' tells us that in Brazil, in the beginning of 



