283 
OBSERVATIONS 
ON 
INSECTS AND VERMES. 
INSECTS IN GENERAL. 
The day and night insects occupy the annuals alternately : the 
papilios, muscae, and apes, are succeeded at the close of day by 
phalsense, earwigs, woodlice, &c. In the dusk of the evening, 
when beetles begin to buz, partridges begin to call ; these two 
circumstances are exactly coincident. 
Ivy is the last flower that supports the hymenopterous and 
dipterous insects. On sunny days quite on to November they 
swarm on trees covered with this plant ; and when they disap- 
# pear, probably retire under the shelter of its leaves, concealing 
themselves between its fibres and the trees which it entwines.* 
Spiders, w^oodlice, lepismae in cupboards and among sugar, 
some empedes, gnats, flies of several species, some phalaenae in 
hedges, earth-worms, &c., are stirring at all times when winters 
are mild ; and are of great service to those soft-billed birds that 
never leave us. 
On every sunny day the winter through, clouds of insects 
usually called gnats (I suppose tipulae and empedes) appear 
sporting and dancing over the tops of the ever-green trees in the 
shrubbery, and frisking about as if the business of generation 
was still going on. Hence it appears that these diptera (which 
by their sizes appear to be of different species) are not subject to 
a torpid state in the winter, as most winged insects are. At night, 
and in frosty weather, and when it rains and blows, they seem to 
retire into those trees. They often are out in a fog.f 
* The number of beautiful alderman butterflies {vanessa atalanta) that may be seen basking on 
, ivy blossoms on a sunny November morning render them a pleasing object to behold. They are 
the resort, too, of great numbers of bees, which keep up an incessant and loud humming. — Ed, 
t This I have also seen, and have frequently observed svearms of little winged insects playing 
up and down in the air in the middle of winter, even when the ground has been covered with 
snow. — Ed. 
