300 
NATURAL HISTORY. 
wings, which do not at all seem proper for flying, but leaping 
only. 
But what this insect chiefly demands our attention for, 
is, the wonderful lightness wherewith it runs on the surface 
of the water, so as scarcely to put it in motion. It is 
sometimes seen in rivers, and on their banks, especially 
under shady trees; and generally in swarms of several 
together. 
The common Water-fry also breeds in the same manner 
with those above-mentioned. This animal is by some called 
the Notonecta, because it does not swim in the usual manner, 
upon its belly, but on its back : nor can we help admiring 
that fitness in this insect for its situation, as it feeds on the 
underside of plants, which grow on the surface of die water; 
and therefore it is thus formed with its mouth upwards, to 
take its food with greater convenience and ease. 
We may also add the Water Scorpion, which is a larger 
insect, being near an inch in length, and about half an inch 
in breadth. Its body is nearly oval, but very flat and thin; 
and its tail long and pointed. The head is small ; and the 
feelers appear like legs, resembling the claws of a scorpion, 
but without sharp points. This insect is generally found 
in ponds; and is extremely tyrannical and rapacious. 
It destroys, like a wolf among sheep, twenty times as 
many as its hunger requires. One of these, when put into a 
bason of water, in which were thirty or forty worms of the 
libellula kind, each as large as itself, destroyed them all in 
a few minutes, getting on their backs, and piercing with its 
trunk through their body. These animals, however, though 
so formidable to others, are nevertheless themselves greatly 
overrun with a little kind of louse, about the size of a nit, 
which very probably repays the injury which the water- 
scorpion inflicts upon others. 
The water-scorpions live in the water by day ; out of 
which they rise in the dusk of the evening into the air, and so 
flying from place to place, often betake themselves, in quest 
ot food, to other waters. The insect, before its wings are 
grown, remains in the place where it was produced ; but 
when come to its stale of perfection, sallies forth in search 
of a companion of the other sex, in order to continue its 
noxious posterity. 
^ The last insect we shall add to this second order is the 
Ephemera ; which though not strictly belonging to it, 
yet seems more properly referred to this rank than’any other. 
