256 fOOD OF INSECTS. 



As to their time of feeding, insects may be divided into three great 

 classes : the day-feeders, the night-feeders, and those which feed indif- 

 ferently at all times. You have been apt to think, I dare say, that when 

 the sun's warmer beams have waked the insect youth, and 



" Ten thousand forms, ten thousand different tribes, 

 People the blaze," 



you see before you the whole insect world. You are not aware that a 



host as numerous shun the glare of day, and, like the votaries of fashion, 



rise not from their couch until their more vulgar brethren have retired to 



rest. While the painted butterfly, the " fervent bees," and the quivering 



nations of flies, which sport 



" Thick in yon stream of light, a thousand ways, 

 Upward and downward thwarting and convolved," 



love to bask in the sun's brightest rays, and search for their food amidst 

 his noontide fervor, an immense multitude stir not before the sober time of 

 twilight, and eat only when night has overshadowed the earth. Then 

 only the vast tribe of moths quit their hiding-places ; "the shard-born^ 

 beetle with his drowsy hum," accompanied by numerous others of his 

 order, sallies forth ; the airy gnat-flies institute their dances ; and the 

 solitary spider stretches his net. A.11 these retire into concealment at the 

 approach of light. Some few larvae (Agrotis exclamationis, &-c.) have 

 similar habits, and those of one singular genus before adverted to (^Nycte- 

 rohhis) are remarkable for providing in the night a store of food which 

 they consume in the day ; but to the generality of these the period of 

 feeding is indifferent, and most of them seem to eat with little intermission 

 night and day. 



Insects, like other animals, take in their food by the mouth (in Chermes 

 and Coccus, indeed, the rostrum seems to be, but really is not, inserted in 

 the breast, between the fore-legs) ; but there is one exception to this rule. 

 The singular Uropoda vegetans, which is such a plague to some beetles, 

 derives its nutriment from them by means of a filiform pedicle or umbilical 

 cord attached to its anus ; and what increases the singularity, sometimes 

 several of these mites form a kind of chain, of which the first only is fixed 

 by its pedicle to the beetle, each of the remainder being similarly con- 

 nected with the one that precedes it ; so that the nutriment drawn from 

 the beetle passes to the last through the bodies and umbilical cords of the 

 individuals which are intermediate.- Some have regarded these bodies as 



' In the controversy between the commentators on Shakespeare, as to whether sAari * 

 means wing-cases, dung, or a fragment of earthenware, and whether born should be spelled 

 with or without the e, it might have thrown some weight into the scale of those who contend 

 for the orthography adopted above, and that the meaning of shard in this place is dung, if 

 they had been aware that the beetle {Geotrupes stercorarius) is actually born amongst dung, 

 and no where else ; and that no beetle which makes a hum in flying can with propriety be 

 said, as Dr. Johnson has interpreted the epithet in his Dictionary, '• to be born amongst 

 broken stones or pots." That Shakespeare alluded to the Beetle, and not to the Cockchafer 

 (Meloloniha vufsaris), seems clear from the fact of the former being to be heard in all places 

 almost every line evening in the summer, while the latter is common only in particular dis- 

 tricts, and at one period of the year. — S. 



* De Geer, vii. 123. 



* Shorn is the common name of cow-dung in the North ; therefore Shakespeare probably 

 wrote 5//i7rn- born. (Mr. MacLemj ) See for various authorities on this question a note 

 by Mr. Bennett in the Zoological Journal, y. 198.; and Mr. Patterson's "Letters on the 

 Natural History of the Insects mentioned in Shakespeare's Plays." 



