The Musquito. 
421 
August, especially if the season be wet, flies seek the 
shelter of houses in great numbers, and become drowsy 
and semi-torpid, or, as children call them, tame. 
“ The small grey-coated Gnat ” is often mentioned by 
Shakspeare. He refers to its habit of dancing, 
& Gnat. 
as it were, m the sunbeams :— 
u When the sun shines let .foolish gnats make sport. 
But creep in crannies when he hides his beams.” 
( Comedy of Errors , ii. 2, 30.) 
“ The common people swarm like summer flies; 
And whither fly the gnats but to the sun ? ” 
(3 Henry VI., ii. 6, 8.) 
This troublesome little insect was evidently common 
in England, and precautions were taken against its 
attacks. We find in an inventory of the goods of the 
abbey of Sawtre, taken in 1537, among other articles of 
furniture of the “ new chamber—the bedstedd with a net 
for knattes ” ( Archseologia , xliii. p. 240). This abbey was 
founded by Simon, Earl of Northampton, in 1146, and was 
dismantled by Henry VIII. 
Muffett quotes from Stow, the chronicler, a strange 
account of a battle between two giant armies of gnats, 
observed between the monasteries of Sion and Shene in 
England; such multitudes of these insects gathered to 
the fray, that the light of the sun was darkened. 
The larger and more venomous gnat, known as the 
Musquito, is mentioned by Henry Hawks, in a description 
of New Spain, in the year 1572 :■— 
“ This towne [Vera Cruz] is inclined to many kinde of diseases, by 
reason of the great heat, and a certaine gnat or flie which they call a 
musquito, which biteth both men and women in their sleepe; and as 
soone as they are bitten, incontinently the flesh swelleth as though 
they had bene bitten with some venimous worme. And this musquito 
or gnat doth most follow such as are newly come into the countrey. 
Many there are that die of this annoyance.” ( ’Hakluyt , vol. iii. 
p. 549.) 
