292 IMPERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
What other spirit can it be that prompts 
The gilded summer flies to mix and weave 
Their sports together in the solar beam, 
Orin 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 cockchafer and fernchafer (M/elolontha 
vulgaris and Amphimalla solstitialis), 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 argentea) assemble by myriads before noon in the meadows, 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 JM. vulgaris and A, solstitialis are on the wing 
only in the evening. 
At the same time of the day some of the short-lived Ephemere asseinble 
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, I was so fortunate as to witness a spectacle of this kind, 
which afforded me a more sublime gratification thanany work or exhibition 
of art has power to communicate. The first was in 1811. Taking an 
evening walk near my house, when the sun, declining fast towards the 
horizon, shone forth without a cloud, the whole atmosphere over and near 
the stream swarmed with infinite myriads of Ephemeree and little gnats of 
the genus Chironomus, which in the sunbeam appeared as numerous and 
more lucid than the drops of rain, as if the heavens were showering down 
brilliant gems. Afterwards, in the following year, one Sunday, a little 
before sunset, I was enjoying a stroll with a friend at a greater distance 
from the river, when in a field by the road side the same pleasing scene was 
renewed, but in a style of still greater magnificence; for, from some caus? 
in the atmosphere, the insects at a distance looked much larger than they 
really were. The choral dancers consisted principally of Ephemera, but 
there were also some of Chironomi: the former, however, being most con- 
spicuous, attracted our chief attention. Alternately rising and falling, in 
the full beam they appeared so transparent and glorious, that they scarcely 
‘resembled any thing material ; they reminded us of angels and glorified 
spirits drinking life and joy in the effulgence of the Divine favour.’ The 
bard of Twickenham, from the terms in which his beautiful description of 
his sylphs is conceived in The Rape of the Lock, seems to have witnessed 
the pleasing scene here described :— 
“Some to the sun their insect wings unfold, 
Watt on the breeze, or sink in clouds of gold ; 
Transparent forms, too fine for mortal sight, 
‘Their fluid bodies half dissolyed in light ; 
1 The females (Scarabeus argenteus Marsh.) have red legs, and the males (Sca- 
vabeus pulverulentus Marsh.) black. 
2 Kirby in Linn. Trans. y. 256. 
5 The authors of this work were the witnesses of the magnificent scene here 
Gesarinat It was on the second of September. ‘The first was on the ninth of that 
month, 
