IMPERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS, 5 
“ Nor wanting here to entertain the thought, 
Creatures that in communities exist, 
Less, as might seem, for general guardianship 
Or through dependance upon mutual aid, 
Than by participation of delight, 
And a strict love of fellowship combined. 
What other spirit can it be that prompts 
The gilded summer flies to mix and weave 
Their sports together in the solar beam, 
Or in the gloom and twilight hum their joy?” 
Another association is that of males during the season 
of pairing. Of this nature seems to be that of the cock- 
chafer and fernchafer (Melolontha vulgaris and solstiti- 
alis, F.), which, at certain periods of the year and hours 
of the day, hover over the summits of the trees and 
hedges like swarms of bees, affording, when they alight 
on the ground, a grateful food to cats, pigs, and poultry. 
The males of another root-devouring beetle (Hoplia ar- 
gentea, F.) assemble by myriads before noon in the mez- 
dows, when in these infinite hosts you will not find even 
one female*. After noon the congregation is dissolved, 
and not a single individual is to be seen in the air?: 
while those of Melolontha vulgaris and solstitialis are 
on the wing only in the evening. 
At the same time of the day some of the short-lived 
Ephemerze assemble in numerous troops, and keep rising 
and falling alternately in the air, so as to exhibit a very 
amusing scene. Many of these also are males. ‘They 
continue this dance from about an hour before sun-set, 
till the dew becomes too heavy or too cold for them. In 
the beginning of September, for two successive years, 
2 The females (Scarabeus argenteus, Marsh.) have red legs, and 
the males (Scarabeus pulverulentus, Marsh.) black. 
> Kirby in Linn. Trans. v. 256. 
