THE YOUNG NATURALIST. 



267 



Tischeria margined and Nepticiila aurella in mines on bramble. I might 

 also have included in the list certain species which (like Endrosis fenestrella) 

 feed on waste substances in houses. 



The moths to be met with in mild Decembers are Pcecilocampa populi, 

 Hylemia aurantiaria, H. defoliaria and Clieimatobia brumata. 



Gnats are the most conspicuous objects in the insect world in the winter 

 time, not, of course, from their size — ting atomies that they are — but their 

 number. No matter how cold the weather is, or how wet, these little creat- 

 ures may be seen gyrating about one another in myriads in mid-air. What 

 the object is of their mazy evolutions I am unable to say. It may be sheer 

 play or it may be they are pursuing and catching some minute forms of life 

 present in the air, for transfixing which the long, slender, and barbed trunk 

 would seem well adapted. A wonderful piece of mechanism this trunk of a 

 gnat is, and it will well repay examination with a microscope. The shortened 

 days and bad weather make an entomologist's opportunities for out-door in- 

 vestigation terribly few, but let him devote a few evenings to the microscopic 

 examination of Cidex pipiens, and if his instrument be a good one, and he 

 gives careful attention to the beautiful details of the structure of the tiny 

 dipteron in question, he will feel he has his reward in the insight he has ob- 

 tained into the manner in which one of not the least wonderful of the 

 Creator's works is formed in each of its several parts ; and if he be a devout 

 man he will rise from his instrument with the pious ejaculation on his lips, 

 wrung from the deepest recesses of his heart — f< 0 Lord, how wondrous are 

 Thy works ! In wisdom hast Thou made them all." 



It would take a long time to tliorougly exhaust the investigation of the 

 structure of even a tiuy gnat — indeed I should say it is impossible to do so 

 with even the most powerful microscope known to the scientific world of the 

 present day. How wonderful in their minute complexity must be those 

 muscles which are capable of moving the insect's wing up and down (vibrat- 

 ing it we call it) at the rate of three thousand times a minute. How won- 

 derful the nerve-force which can be transmitted along such microscopic 

 nerves as a gnat must possess, and communicate motion to the infinitesimally 

 minute fibres. 



The microscopist carries on his investigations with feelings akin to those 

 excited in the mind of him who sweeps the heavens with a telescope. The 

 astronomer is appalled by the infinitely great, the microscopist is awe-struck 

 by the infinitely little. How many must the muscles be which a tiny gnat 

 possesses in order that it may accomplish the varied motions necessary for its 

 existence and how extremely minute must each one be ! But if the muscles 

 in a gnat's body are inconceivably minute what must they not be in one of 



