30 LETTERS ON ENTOMOLOGY. 
spectacle,, and filled with admiration even the 
most ignorant and stupid of his domestics : the 
light was surrounded with a great number of 
brilliant circles,, formed by rows of ephemerae, 
having the appearance of a scolloped line of 
silver, whirling round with great rapidity. Every 
one of these flies having made one or two circles, 
fell on the ground. At near ten o'clock this 
great cloud had almost disappeared. They had 
laid their eggs, and closed their transitory exist- 
ence. — I cannot finish my letter without giving 
you the animated and poetical description of a 
similar scene, from the Introduction to Ento- 
mology. 
" I was so fortunate as to witness a spectacle 
of this kind, which afforded me a more sublime 
gratification than any work or exhibition of art 
has power to communicate. The first was in 
1811 : — taking an evening walk near my house, 
when the sun, declining fast towards the horizon, 
shone forth without a cloud, the whole atmo- 
sphere over and near the stream swarmed with 
infinite myriads of ephemerae and little gnats of 
the genus Chironomus, which, in the sunbeam, 
appeared as numerous and more lucid than the 
drops of rain, as if the heavens were showering 
down brilliant gems. Afterwards, in the follow- 
