WW IMPERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
though the country usually abounds in such a variety *. 
—Major Moor, while stationed at Bombay, as he was 
playing at chess one evening with a friend in Old Wo- 
man’s Island, near that place, witnessed an immense 
flight of bugs (Cimices), which were going westward. 
They were so numerous as to cover every thing in the 
apartment in which he was sitting.— When staying at 
Aldeburgh, on the eastern coast, I have, at certain 
times, seen innumerable insects upon the beach close to 
the waves, and apparently washed up by them. Though 
wetted, they were quite alive. It is remarkable, that of 
the emigrating insects here enumerated, the majority— 
for instance the Libellulze, Coccinellae, Carabi, Cicadze, 
&c.—are not usually social insects, but seem to congre- 
gate, like swallows, merely for the purpose of emigration. 
What incites them to this is one of those mysteries of 
nature, which at present we cannot penetrate. A scarcity 
of food urges the locusts to shift their quarters; and too 
confined a space to accommodate their numbers occa- 
sions the bees to swarm: but neither of these motives 
can operate in causing unsocial insects to congregate. 
It is still more difficult to account for the impulse that 
urges these creatures, with their filmy wings and fragile 
form, to attempt to cross the ocean, and expose them- 
selves, one would think, to inevitable destruction. Yet, 
though we are unable to assign the cause of this singular 
instinct, some of the reasons which induced the Creator 
to endow them with it may be conjectured. This is 
clearly one of the modes by which their numbers are 
kept within due limits, as, doubtless, the great majority 
of these adventurers perish in the waters. Thus, also, a 
aR, Milt, Chron. for March 1814, p. 452. 
