10 IMPERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
tained; that the Coccinella attempt it, is evident from their 
alighting upon ships at sea, as I have witnessed myself.— 
This appears clearly to have been the case with another 
emigrating insect, the saw-fly (Zenthredo) of the turnip 
(which, though so mischievous, appears never to have been 
described; it is nearly related to 7. Centzfolia, Panz.)?. 
It is the general opinion in Norfolk, Mr. Marshall in- 
forms us>, that these insects come from over sea. A 
farmer declared he saw them arrive in clouds so as to 
darken the air; the fishermen asserted that they had re- 
peatedly seen flights of them pass over their heads when 
they were at a distance from land; and on the beach 
and cliffs they were in such quantities, that they might 
have been taken up by shovels-full. Three miles in-land 
they were described as resembling swarms of bees. This 
was in August 1782. Unentomological observers, such 
as farmers and fishermen, might easily mistake one kind 
of insect for another; but supposing them correct, the 
swarms in question might perhaps have passed from 
Lincolnshire to Norfolk.—Meinecken tells us, that he 
once saw in a village in Anhalt, on a clear day, about 
four in the afternoon, such a cloud of dragon-flies (Ii- 
bellule, L.) as almost concealed the sun, and not a little 
alarmed the villagers, under the idea that they were lo- 
custs®; several instances are given by Rosel of similar 
clouds of these insects having been seen in Silesia and 
other districts’; and Mr. Woolnough of Hollesley in 
Suffolk, a most attentive observer of nature, once wit- 
nessed such an army of the smaller dragon-flies (Agrion, 
I.) flying in-land from the sea, as to cast a slight shadow 
a Fn. Germ. Init. xlix. 18, > Philos. Trans, \xxiii, 217, 
© Naturforsch. vi. 110, 4 it, 13d) 
