330 



FOOD OF INSECTS. 



love to bask in the sun's brightest rays, and search for their 

 food amidst his noontide fervour, an immense multitude stir 

 not before the sober time of twilight, and eat only when night 

 has overshadowed the earth. Then only the vast tribe of 

 moths quit their hiding-places ; " the shard-born ^ beetle with 

 his drowsy hum," accompanied by numerous others of his 

 order, sallies forth ; the airy gnat-flies institute their dances ; 

 and the solitary spider stretches his net. All these retire 

 into concealment at the approach of light. Some few larvae 

 (^Agrotis exclamationis, &c.) have similar habits, and those of 

 one singular genus before adverted to (Nycterohius) are re- 

 markable for providing in the night a store of food which 

 they consume in the day ; but to the generality of these the 

 period of feeding is indilFerent, and most of them seem to eat 

 with little intermission night and day. 



Insects, like other animals, take in their food by the mouth 

 (in Chermes and Coccus, indeed, the rostrum seems to be, but 

 really is not, inserted in the breast, between the fore-legs) ; 

 but there is one exception to this rule. The singular Uropoda 

 vegetans, which is such a plague to some beetles, derives its 

 nutriment from them by means of a filiform pedicle or umbi- 

 lical cord attached to its anus ; and what increases the singu- 

 larity, sometimes several of these mites form a kind of chain, 

 of which the first only is fixed by its pedicle to the beetle, 

 each of the remainder being similarly connected w^ith the one 

 that precedes it ; so that the nutriment drawn from the beetle 



1 In the controversy between the commentators on Shakespeare, as to whether 

 shard * means wing-cases, dung, or a fragment of earthenware, and whether born 

 should be spelled with or without the e, it might have thrown some weight into the 

 scale of those who contend for the orthography adopted above, and that the meaning 

 of shard in this place is dung, if they had been aware that the beetle ( Geotrupes 

 stercorarius) is actually born amongst dung, and no where else ; and that no 

 beetle which makes a hum in flying can with propriety be said, as Dr. Johnson 

 has interpreted the epithet in his Dictionary, " to be born amongst broken stones 

 or pots." That Shakespeare alluded to the Beetle, and not to the Cockchafer 

 (Melolontha vulgaris), seems clear from the fact of the former being to be heard in 

 all places almost every fine evening in the summer, while the latter is common 

 only in particiilar districts, and at one period of the year. — S. 



* Sharn is the common name of cow-dung in the North ; therefore Shakes- 

 peare probably wrote s7i«m-born. (Mr. MacLeay.) See for various authorities 

 on this question a note by Mr. Bennett in the Zoological Journal, v. 198. ; and 

 Mr. Patterson's " I^etters ou the Natural History of the Insects mentioned in 

 Shakespeare's Plays," 



