96 



The Naturalist. 



cognac dimmed liis recollection of Englisli grammar. I suppose 

 incubus was the word intended. Now, I also plead guilty to this .soft 

 impeachment — not the brandy, but the incubus. It must be cast off. 

 I have tried to limn a cheerful picture, to cull from Nature's bouquet 

 a few bright flowers, to speak fair for all I've seen and heard. 

 Have I not advanced the Diptera to a front position, and solemnly 

 published their order — grand ? I have ! In token thereof I hereby 

 attach my mark, X. Henceforth must I be just. I 8poke of Nature : 

 I speak on Gnat-ure. Bombylius and Andrax, ye may number 

 amongst ye the fairest of all created fairies ; atomic Culex and blue- 

 blooded Daddy Longlegs,* ye may lay claim to veneration : but I 

 love ye not — and wherefore ? Because of yours ! Are ye not allied 

 to man's chiefest foes — the mosquitoes % against whom Burns might 

 have thundered — 



Ye hypocrites ! are these your pranks, 

 To murder men, and gie God thanks 1" 



and screamed aloud in very sleepless restlessness — 



For shame ! gie o'er — proceed no further- 

 God won't accept your thanks for murther." 



The quality of mercy is not strained, excepting towards mosquitoes 

 and house-flies. f I' count intolerable heat by day and night, aching 

 bones and tired limbs, as naught ; but the stings and buzzes of imps 

 of darkness and damp ticklings of moonlight imps, as intolerable, 

 i/^z/>ardonable, fiendish. I am satisfied with the theory of " use in all 

 created beings," but draw the line at mosquitoes and house flies, 

 excusably mollifying outraged feelings in the notion that their breed 

 has deteriorated w^hilst ours progressed ; they were created check- 

 mates to antediluvian apes, and by judicious (1) natural selection 

 transferred their affections to culminating humankind. Dr. Spencer 

 Cobbold, the renowned helminthologist, in his Filarian theory, 

 champions John Chinaman. Emigration has just presented us a few 

 samples of our pigtailed brethren. Mosquitoes will have their blood. 

 Exchange is no robbery ! Personal pain is a grand charity-syphon, 

 and occasionally, when I have been compelled to jump from my couch 

 irritated beyond expression, abstraction guiding my footsteps towards 

 the window, I have gazed upon the miserable forms of tick-troubled, 

 weather-beaten, well-whipped oxen, remembering also the Tsetse-ills, 

 etcetera, which their race is heir to, — and back to bed I turn, contented 

 with my lot, yet full of sadness. Verily Diptera is a good name, only 



* Not T. oleracea. 



t Colonists from the old country. 



