THE COMMON GNAT. 



445 



and unpleasant sensations. Mr. Swinton, who has 

 given an account of them in the Philosophical 

 Transactions, has stated that he was one evening 

 in the garden of Wadham College, about half an 

 hour before sun-set, in company with another gen- 

 tleman, when they were observed in numbers almost 

 unexampled. Six distinct columns were observed 

 to ascend from the tops of six branches of an apple- 

 tree in an adjoining garden, separated from that in 

 which they were stationed by a wall at least fifty or 

 sixty feet in height. Two of these columns seemed 

 perfectly erect, three of them were oblique, and 

 one approached somewhat towards a pyramidal 

 form. The bodies of some of the Gnats were 

 greatly distended with blood ; one, considerably 

 larger than the rest, that was killed, had as much 

 blood expressed from as besmeared part of a wall 

 three inches square. — About thirty years before this 

 many columns of Gnats were observed to rise from 

 the top of the cathedral church at Salisbury. At a 

 little distance they had so great a resemblance to 

 smoke as, at first, to occasion considerable alarm 

 lest the church was on fire*. 



It is impossible to behold and not admire the 

 beautiful structure of the proboscis of the Gnat, 

 through which it draws the juices that afford it nou- 

 rishment. The naked eye is only able to discover 

 a long and slender tube, containing five or six 

 spiculae of exquisite fineness. These spicule, in- 

 troduced into the veins of animals, act like the 



Jwinton in Phil, Ton. vol. Ivii. p. ill. 



