140 FLIES. 



pulp. Occasionally, in his rambles over dry wood- 

 lands in the early summer, one sees racemes of 

 the delicate bell blossoms of the low blueberry, 

 transformed into a clump of tough, leathery pend- 

 ants, each distorted and swollen to four or five 

 times its natural size. This is the result of the 

 ovipositor of a particular species that visits only 

 this kind of flower. 



On the leaves of young oaks there is a fly that 

 makes a most extraordinary gall. It resembles a 

 ball of white plush, ornamented with pinkish spots 

 of delicate tint, and placed at regular intervals, as 

 if by artificial design. Indeed this singular accre- 

 tion, frequently met with, suggests the humor or 

 caprice of a party of fair, gay picnickers that have 

 visited the woods and stitched here and there on 

 the twigs specimens of rosettes and tassels, from 

 their millinery trappings. 



Occasionally, in my Winter walks along the 

 sunny side of stone walls, where huge wads of 

 dead leaves have been rolled up by the wind, I 

 notice swarms of small gnat-like insects out in the 

 sunshine to try their wings. They play up and 

 down over particular spots, as if some unseen 

 fairy magician was having a game of cup and ball 

 with them. They are not mosquitoes at all, nor 

 those small flies with feathered antennae, seen so 

 often hovering over damp places in the early 

 Spring, but a species of the daddy-long-legs family 



