BURROWING INSECTS. 121 



least forty years ! It never seems to weary. It wavers up and 

 down, up and down in the air, together with myriads of its com- 

 panions, and for the greater portion of its terrestrial existence is 

 an inhabitant of the air; yet its life has not altogether been 

 spent in amusing itself, for it has passed an existence of some 

 three years or more hidden from human gaze. 



To-day it is a bright denizen of the sunbeams, exulting in its 

 beauty, and dancing in vciy rapture in the air; yesterday, it 

 was a denizen of the mud, a slimy, crawling, repulsive creature, 

 breathing through the medium of the water, and feeding greedily 

 upon any prey that might come within its reach. Yesterday, had 

 it been removed from the water and laid in the sunbeams, it would 

 have died as with poison, and in an hour would have been re- 

 duced to a dry and withered semblance of its former seK ; to-day, 

 were it to be plunged beneath the waters, it would quickly 

 perish, and be shortly eaten by its former companions. For it 

 is fitted for a higher position and a purer atmosphere, so that the 

 element which but a few hours ago was its very life, has now 

 become a present death, and the food in which it so lately 

 revelled can no longer be received into that etheroalized form. 



So is it with many other insects. Some of our most tender 

 and downy-plumed moths, whose exquisitely delicate raiment is 

 destroyed by a touch, have entered upon their winged state while 

 in the bowels of the earth, and have made their way through the 

 soil without losing a single feather of the myriad plumes with 

 which their bodies and wings are covered. Flies, too, whose 

 slender bodies and light gauzy wings always excite our wonder, 

 that a thing so light should contend with the world, have passed 

 the greater part of their lives in some dark hole, where the fresh 

 air never entered, and into which the sunbeams never cast a ray. 



Were this work to be arranged according to the rigid systems 

 of zoological schoolmen, the list of burrowing insects must have 

 been headed by the beetles ; but, as the subject of the book is 

 to describe the peculiar dwellings which are needful for the 

 welfare of various animals, a different arrangement is necessary, so 

 that a well-buUt home takes precedence over a well-developed 

 animal. If we wish to select an order of insects which surpasses 

 every other in the variety and excellence of their burrows, we 

 turn at once to the Hymenoptera, a large and important group of 



