296 



MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 



You have often in the woods and other places seen flies sus- 

 pended 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 Greer. 1 I have frequently amused myself with watch- 

 ing them ; but when I have endeavoured to entrap them with 

 my forceps, they have immediately shifted their quarters, and 

 resumed their amusement elsewhere. That their object is 

 simply amusement seems proved by the fact noticed by Mr. 

 Curtis, that " if you catch a dozen in your morning's walk, 

 they are all males who are thus enjoying themselves." 2 The 

 most remarkable insects in this respect are the sphinxes, and 

 from this they doubtless took their name of hawk-moths. 

 When they unfold their long tongue, and wipe its sweets 

 from any nectariferous flower, they always keep upon the 

 wing, suspending themselves over it till they have exhausted 

 them, when they fly away to another. The species called by 

 collectors the humming-bird (Macroglossa stellataruni), and 

 by some persons mistaken for a real one, is remarkable for 

 this, and the motion of its wings is inconceivably rapid. 3 



The gyrations of insects take place either when they are re- 

 posing, or when thay are flying or swimming. — I was once 

 much diverted by observing the actions of a minute moth upon 

 a leaf on which it was stationed. Making its head the centre 

 of its revolutions, it turned round and round with consider- 

 able rapidity, as if it had the vertigo, for some time. 4 I did not, 

 however, succeed in my attempts to take it. — Scaliger noticed 

 a similar motion in the book-crab (Chelifer cancroides). 5 



Reaumur describes in a very interesting and lively way the 

 gyrations of the Ephemerae, before noticed, round a lighted 

 flambeau. It is singular, says he, that moths which fly only 

 in the night, and shun the day, should be precisely those that 

 come to seek the light in our apartments. It is still more 

 extraordinary that these Ephemeras — which appearing after 

 sunset, and dying before sunrise, are destined never to be- 



i vi. 104. 2 Gardener's Chronicle, 1841, p. 52. 



3 Rai. Hist. Ins. 133. 1. 



4 Mr. Westwood informs us that he has repeatedly observed the same pro- 

 ceeding, and that the insect is Simaethis fabriciana. 



o Lesser, 1. i. 248. note 22. 



