KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL 



161 



THE INSECT WORLD IN EAELY SPRING. 

 THE GNAT. 



f<^V^r TV HERE ARE SO MANY WONDERS 

 ^ft'wffi^i IN OUR LOWER WORLD, AND 

 ^uV;^^ THEY ARE NOW MULTIPLYING 



SO fast, that we shall find it 

 somewhat difficult to keep 

 pace with them. However, 

 we will bring them into view, 

 one by one ; and what we can- 

 not record on paper, we will assuredly 

 examine in the open air. 



Among the early visitants in the insect 

 world we gladly recognise the gnat. The 

 sight of him fills our hearts with rejoicing, as 

 the thought of Spring being at our elbow 

 immediately suggests itself. Long since has 

 he been seen, sunning himself in Sol's golden 

 rays ; and many hours of happiness has he 

 had whilst pursuing his giddy exhilarating 

 flight.* 



We shall have many a glorious morning 

 during the present month, and no doubt many 

 a quiet stroll where our hero loves to ramble. 

 Imagining ourselves in an oak wood, let us 

 listen to what a very pleasant writer says 

 about the gnat. He is recording his reminis- 

 cences of insect life. 



Entering the wood, a sprinkle of snow, crisp 

 and glittering, slightly veiled the wood-tracks ; 

 and as we trod them, we heard not a sound but 

 the little gems breaking on the spangled path- 

 way. Our spirits were so light, our blood 

 danced so briskly, our heart glowed, like 

 our feet, so warmly, and rose so thankfully 

 to the Great Source of all things, calm and 

 bright and beautiful, that we longed for 

 something animate to join us in our homage 

 of enjoyment. The wish was hardly conceived 

 ere it was accomplished; for on passing 

 beneath a canopy of low, interlacing branches, 

 we suddenly found ourselves making one with 

 a company of gnats— dancing, though more 

 mutely, quite as merrily as they could pos- 

 sibly have footed it on the balmy air of a 



* We may here remark, that the first grand 

 day this year for an observation of the birth of ; 

 gnats, was February 26. The morning was one ' 

 of extreme loveliness. The sun rose "happily" 

 upon the world; and diffused universal jov over 

 the whole face of nature throughout the entire 

 day. To reckon up the numerous bodies of 

 happy gnats (giddy with ecstacy), that started 

 into life in all imaginable corners, would be an 

 impossibility. The sun's rays performed miracles 

 as we walked along. Bees, flies, gnats, beetles ,— 

 all met our wondering eye ; nor did vegetation in its 

 turn remain idle. Trees and flowers were busy as 

 the rest ; and the earth acknowledged gratefully its 

 obligations to the Author of all good. We shall 

 not soon forget the delights of that day : nor the 

 joyousness of our feelings as we contemplated 

 tins lovely commencement of Nature's handiwork. 

 — Ed. K. J. 



summer's eve. Their appearance was 

 welcome to our eyes, not as flowers in May, 

 but as flowers in February ; and we sat 

 down on one of the oaken stumps hard by, 

 to watch their evolutions. Mazy and intricate 

 enough, in sooth, they seemed ; yet these 

 light-winged figurantes, little as one might 

 think it, would seem to have "measure in 

 their mirth," aye, and mathematics too ; 

 for it is stated as a fact, in Darley's " Geo- 

 metrical Companion," that no three of these 

 dancers can so place themselves that lines 

 joining their point of position shall form 

 either more or less than two right angles. 

 The set upon which we had intruded was 

 an assemblage of those Tipulidan or long- 

 legged gnats, which have been named tell- 

 tales ; we suppose because by their presence 

 in winter they seem to tell a tale of early 

 Spring, belied by the bitter east, wdiich often 

 tells us another story when we turn from their 

 sheltered saloon of assembly. 



In this single instance, however, these are 

 not the only tell-tales of their kind ; for quite 

 as common, at the same season, are some 

 other parties of aerial dancers, one of which 

 we fell in with soon after we had taken leave 

 of the first. These were tiny sylphs, with 

 black bodies and wings of snow-white gauze, 

 and like " choice spirits black, white, and 

 grey," — for they wore plumes of the latter 

 color — they were greeting the quiet young 

 year with mirth and revelry ; and that over 

 a frozen pool, whose icy presence one would 

 have fancied quite enough for their instant 

 annihilation. But though warmed hy exercise, 

 these merry mates care so little for the cold 

 without, they are glad enough, when occasion 

 serves, to profit by the shelter of our windows. 

 In ours we often watch them ; and you, good 

 reader, had better seek for them, unless you 

 would miss the sight of as pretty and elegant 

 a little creature as any one could desire to 

 look at on a fine summer's, much more 

 winter's day. 



"We have spoken of the plumes of these 

 winged revellers, black, white, and grey, 

 which dance in the air as merrily as the 

 Quaker's wife in the song ; but here be it 

 observed that our gnats' wives, with real 

 Quaker- like sobriety, rarely, if ever, dance 

 at all, and never by any accident wear 

 feathers. They may do work, as we shall 

 perhaps discover by and by ; but as for 

 plumes, in poetic phrase, " feathered antlers," 

 --in scientific, "pectinate antenna" these are 

 decorations of vanity exclusively confined 

 among all gnats to the masculine gender. 

 Gnats' balls, therefore, contrary to usual 

 custom, are made up of beaux. 



'Tis merry in the hall when beards wag all, 



says the morose proverb, steeped in the 

 boozing barbarism of days gone by ; and these 



Vol. V.— li. 



