CANTO ii. REPRODUCTION OF LIFE. 65 



Break from their stems, and on the liquid glass 

 Surround the admiring stigmas as they pass; 

 The love- sick Beauties lift their essenced brows, 

 Sigh to the Cyprian queen their secret vows, 

 Like watchful Hero feel their soft alarms, 

 And clasp their floating lovers in their arms. 



" Hence the male Ants their gauzy wings unfold, 

 And young Lampyris waves his plumes of gold; 

 The Glow- Worm sparkles with impassion'd light 

 On each green bank, and charms the eye of night; 2QO 

 While new desires the painted Snail perplex, 

 And twofold love unites the double sex. 



acquire wings, but not the females, as ants, coccus, lampyris, pha- 

 Isena, brumata, lichanella; Botanic Garden, Vol. II. Note on Vallis- 

 neria. 



And young Lampyris, 1. 288. The fire-fly is at some seasons so 

 luminous, that M. Merian says, that by putting two of them under a 

 glass, she was able to draw her figures of them by night. Whether 

 the light of this and of other insects be caused by their amatorial 

 passion, and thus assists them to find each other; or is caused by 

 respiration, which is so analogous to combustion; or to a tendency 

 to putridity, as in dead fish and rotten wood, is still to be investi- 

 gated; see Botanic Garden, Vol. I. Additional Note IX. 



K 



