284 



MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 



The insects of this and of every other order, except the 

 Coleoptera, fly with their bodies in a horizontal position, or 

 nearly so. As their wings are usually so ample, we need not 

 wonder that the Lepidoptera are excellent fliers. Indeed 

 they seem to flit untired from flower to flower, and from field 

 to field ; impelled at one while by hunger, and at another by 

 love or maternal solicitude. The distance to which some 

 males will fly is astonishing. That of one of the silk-worm 

 moths {Attacks Paplxia) is stated to travel sometimes more 

 than a hundred miles in this way. 1 Our most beautiful 

 butterfly, the purple emperor {Apatura Iris), when he makes 

 his first appearance fixes his throne on the summit of some 

 lofty oak, from whence in sunny days, unattended by his 

 empress, who does not fly, he takes his excursions. Launch- 

 ing into the air from one of the highest twigs, he mounts 

 often to so great a height as to become invisible. When the 

 sun is at the meridian his loftiest flights take place ; and 

 about four in the afternoon he resumes his station of repose. 2 

 The large bodies of hawk-moths {Sphinx F.) are carried 

 by wings remarkably strong both as to nervures and texture, 

 and their flight is proportion ably rapid and direct. That of 

 butterflies is by dipping and rising alternately, so as to form 

 a zigzag line with vertical angles, which the animal often 

 describes with a skipping motion, so that each zigzag consists 

 of smaller ones. This doubtless renders it more difficult for 

 the birds to take them as they fly ; and thus the male, when 

 paired, often flits away with the female. 



Amongst the neuropterous tribes the most conspicuous 

 insects are the dragon-flies {Libellulind), which — their me- 

 tamorphosis, habits, mode of life, and characters considered — 

 form a distinct natural order of themselves. Their four 



1 Linn, Trans, vii. 40. 



2 Haworth, Lepidopt. Brit. i. 19. Mr. Hewitson, in an interesting notice of 

 this species, informs us that at Kissingen in Bavaria, where he had an oppor- 

 tunity of observing its habits in June and July, 1839, after long and rapid flights 

 in the outskirts of a neighbouring forest, they would enter its most shady re- 

 cesses to cool themslves, and lap the moisture from any puddles of water (pre- 

 ferring the most filthy) with their long trunks ; and were so eager in this occu- 

 pation that he has had seven under a small flat net at once, and could even 

 take them readily with his finger and thumb. (Entomologist, June, 1842, 

 p. 324.) 



