368 MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 
backwards and forwards alternately. ‘Thus the oviposi- 
tor, which terminates her long cylindrical pointed abdo- 
men, made its way into the hard soil, and deposited her 
egos in a secure situation. All, however, were not com- 
mitted to the same burrow; for she every now and then 
shifted her station, but not more than an inch from where 
she bored last. While she was thus engaged, I cbserved 
her male companion suspended by one of his legs on a 
twig, not far from her. ‘The common turf-boring crane- 
fly (7. oleracea, L.), when engaged in laying eggs, moves 
over the grass with her body in a vertical position, by 
the help—her four anterior legs being in the air—of her 
two posterior ones, and the end of her abdomen, which 
performs the office of ancther. Whether in boring, like 
T. variegata, she turns halfround and back, dces not ap- 
pear from Reaumur’s account?. 
I now come to motions whose object seems to be sport 
and amusement rather than locomotion. ‘They may be 
considered as of three kinds—hovering—eyrations—and 
dancing. 
You have often in the woods and other places seen 
flies suspended as it were in the air, their wings all the 
while moving so rapidly as to be almost invisible. This 
hovering, which seems peculiar to the aphidivorous flies, 
has been also noticed by De Geer’. I have frequently 
amused myself with watching them; but when I have 
endeavoured to entrap them with my forceps, they have 
immediately shifted their quarters, and resumed their 
amusement elsewhere. The most remarkable insects in 
this respect are the sphinxes, and from this they doubt- 
ay, 20—, b vi, 104, 
