WINTER GEMS AND SECRETS. 
153 
chance, like living in three centuries. Indeed, some have 
that appearance, for they often become faded and torn and 
lose much of their beauty. 
But, certainly* you would say, the more fragile species 
cannot endure the rough cold, yet on the thirteenth day of 
December, there was captured on the wall of a room and 
brought to my notice a frail bit of insect life, less than nine 
millimetres in length. It was pale yellowish in color, and 
in strong light suggested “a little airy thing,” of which 
Wm. Hamilton Gibson wrote, “with a glistening sunbeam 
for a body and wings of tiny rainbows.” 
I found a similar one among my own collection, taken a 
few weeks earler, but the members of the same family are 
often found upon the snow in late winter or early spring. 
This particular insect was Micromus insipidus, of the fam¬ 
ily Hemerobidse, and is closely related to the “Dobson,” 
the ant-lion and aphis-lion, or “Golden-eyes,” the pretty 
little being with green lace wings which hovers over the 
grass and clover fields in summer time. They all have an 
old-fashioned air about them, and a> likeness in wing struc¬ 
ture, but though the wings are strongly veined, these in¬ 
sects are feeble fliers. What they lack in strength seems 
to be made up in great beauty. 
The wings of Micromus are very glassy, and the pale 
veins are broken by fuscous interruptions; the fore legs are 
prettily banded, and the antennae are beaded like a neck¬ 
lace. This small insect, which is but one of the winter 
gems, remember, long ago made a pretty study for the 
scientist and has been carefully described. Those who are 
willing to make a study of even small things may be abun¬ 
dantly rewarded in their search after truth and beauty. 
