456 THE ZOQOOLOGIST. 
NOTES ON THE EPHEMERID A. 
By Gorpown DALGULIESsH. 
Witn the Mayfly will always be o~::).. 4 name of 
Swammerdam, who did so much to iuiiuic. vu: — owledge of 
this insect. When we read that the tools employed by Swam- 
merdam for the dissection of a Mayfly larva were so . mall as to 
require whetting under a microscope can we truly appreciate 
the labours of this indefatigable naturalist ? 
Swammerdam was born in Holland, and early inherited his 
father’s tastes for the collection and study of natural history 
objects. Swammerdam, we are told, was famous for his minute 
dissections and inflated and injected preparations, and it was 
only after a number of hardships and rebuffs that his work was 
acknowledged and appreciated in France. From constant toil 
and the eye-trying work of the microscope, at the early age 
of thirty-two Swammerdam was completely worn out, nearly 
blind, and narrowly escaped death. About this time, too, owing 
to some disagreement with his father, he was turned away from 
the home that had hitherto sheltered him, and, after a life of 
abject poverty, died at the age of forty-three. Swammerdam’s 
great work was posthumous, and was known as the ‘ Biblia 
Nature.’ This contained the complete life-histories of over a 
dozen insects. The history of the Mayfly was published during 
Swammerdam’s life in 1675. 
The Mayflies belong to the order Neuroptera, which order 
may be so called our oldest insects, for in the rocks formed 
during the remote Devonian period we find fossil ‘‘ Mayflies,” 
although of ancient type (Platephemera antiqua), during the time 
of the deposition of our coal-fields.* 
There are about thirty-eight species of British Mayflies 
(W. EF. Kirby, in lit.), and they are all extremely delicate insects, — 
having the anterior wings largely developed and the posterior 
* According to Hagen (Bull. Mus. Harvard, viii. p. 276 (1880-1) ) this fossil 
may be regarded as a dragonfly. Brongniart considers it to be more allied to 
the Mayflies (cf. Sharp, Cambr. Nat. Hist. y. p. 428).—Eb. 
