over. I have sometimes seen the surface of the water covered with the bodies of gnats which had perished in this way; but for the most part all terminates favourably, and the danger is instantly over." When the gnat has extricated itself all but the tail, it first stretches out its two fore-legs, and then the middle pair, bending them down to feel for the water, upon which it is able to walk as upon dry land, the only aquatic faculty which it retains after having winged its way above the element where it spent the first ages of its existence." It leaves," says Swammerdam, "its cast skin on the water, where it insensibly decays." Réaumur doubts whether Swammerdam ever actually saw this interesting transformation. We have seen it twice only.'-pp. 317-319.

It has been demonstrated by Jurine, that every vein of the wings of insects contains an air tube, which has its origin in the windpipe and follows in a serpentine form, without filling, every branchlet of the nervures.' A striking peculiarity in the nature of insects is that they do not increase, like other animals, in size, as they grow older. Butterflies of the same species are generally found to be of the same size; if there be any exceptions they are generally traceable to accident. The house flies are so much alike in size, as every one may observe, that it is difficult to detect the slightest difference in this respect. We often meet with flies larger and smaller than the house fly, but these are of other species.

There is little doubt but that what have been called in the old chronicles "showers of blood," have been produced by insects. Peiresc was the first to discover this interesting fact, and to explain a phenomenon which was magnified by superstition into a visitation of heavenly wrath.

'It is not a little remarkable, that when insects are evolved from the pupa state, they always discharge some substance. It is important to remark, that the matter voided at this period by many butterflies (Vanessæ, &c.) is of a red colour, resembling blood, while that of several moths is orange or whitish. It could not readily be supposed that this should become the object of superstitious terror, yet so it has been in more instances than one. Mouffet tells us, from Sleidan, that in the year 1553, a prodigious multitude of butterflies swarmed throughout a great portion of Germany, and sprinkled plants, leaves, buildings, clothes, and men, with bloody drops as if it had rained blood. Several historians, indeed, have recorded showers of blood among the prodigies which have struck nations with consternation, as the supposed omen of the destruction of cities and the overthrow of empires. About the beginning of July, 1608, one of these showers of blood was supposed to have fallen in the suburbs of Aix, and for many miles round it, and particularly the walls of a churchyard were spotted with the blood. This occurrence would, no doubt, have been chronicled in history as a supernatural prodigy, had not Aix possessed at this time, in M. Peiresc, a philosopher, who, in the eager pursuit of all kinds of knowledge, had not neglected the study of insects. It is accordingly related, in the curious life of Peiresc by Gassendi, that he had, about the time of the rumoured shower of blood, happened to find a large chrysalis, the beauty of which made him preserve it in a box. Some time after,

hearing a noise in the box, he opened it and found a fine butterfly, which had left upon the bottom a red stain of considerable magnitude, and apparently of exactly the same nature with the drops on the stones, popularly supposed to be blood. He remarked, at the same time, that there were countless numbers of butterflies flying about, which confirmed him in the belief of his having discovered the true cause; and this was further corroborated by his finding none of the red drops in the heart of the city, where the butterflies were rarely seen. He also remarked, that the drops were never on tiles, and seldom on the upper part of a stone, as they must have been had they fallen from the heavens, but usually appeared in cavities and parts protected by some angular projection. What Peiresc had thus ascertained, he lost no time in disclosing to many persons of knowledge and curiosity, who had been puzzling themselves to account for the circumstance by far-fetched reasonings, such as a supposed vapour which had carried up a supposed red earth into the air, that had tinged the rain ;-no less wide of the truth than the popular superstition which ascribed it to magic, or to the devil himself. Those who are curious to verify the discovery, as we may well call it, of Peiresc, may easily do so by rearing any of the spinous caterpillars which feed on the nettle till they are transformed into the butterfly. We have witnessed the circumstance in innumerable

instances. pp. 350-352.

We have already alluded to the dancing propensities of the gnat; groups of this tribe may be seen in winter as well as in summer, frisking about in the beams of the sun. The dances of the whirling beetles are amusingly described by Mr. Knapp.

"Water, quiet, still water, affords a place of action to a very amuisng little fellow (Gyrinus natator), which, about the month of April, if the weather be tolerably mild, we see gamboling upon the surface of the sheltered pool; and every schoolboy, who has angled for minnows in the brook, is well acquainted with this merry swimmer in his shining black jacket. Retiring in the autumn, and reposing all the winter in the mud at the bottom of the pond, it awakens in the spring, rises to the surface, and commences its summer sports. They associate in small parties of ten or a dozen, near the bank, where some little projection forms a bay, or renders the water particularly tranquil; and here they will circle round each other without contention, each in his sphere, and with no apparent object, from morning until night, with great sprightliness and animation; and so lightly do they move on the fluid, as to form only some faint and transient circles on its surface. Very fond of society, we seldom see them alone, or, if parted by accident, they soon rejoin their busy companions. One pool commonly affords space for the amusement of several parties; yet they do not unite or contend, but perform their cheerful circlings in separate family associations. If we interfere with their merriment they seem greatly alarmed, disperse, or dive to the bottom, where their fears shortly subside, as we soon again see our little merry friends gamboling as before. This plain, tiny, gliding water-flea seems a very unlikely creature to arrest our young attentions; but the boy with his angle has not often much to engage his notice, and the social active parties of this nimble swimmer, presenting themselves at these periods of vacancy, become insensibly familiar to his sight, and by many of us are not observed in after

life without recalling former hours, scenes of, perhaps, less anxious days; for trifles like these, by reason of some association, are often remembered, when things of greater moment pass off and leave no trace upon the mind." -pp. 368, 369.

The dances of the ephemera, which appear after sun-set and die before sun-rise, prove, that if theirs be a short life, it is at least as merry as they can make it. The description is abridged from Reaumur.

It is usually about the middle of August that the ephemera of the Seine and Marne are expected by the fishermen, and when their season is come they talk of the manna beginning to appear, calling the insects by this term on account of the quantity of food for the fish, which falls as the manna is recorded to have done in the desert. On the 19th of August, Réaumur, having received notice that the flies had begun to appear, and that millions of them were coming out of the water, got into his boat about three hours before sunset; but after staying in the boat till eight o'clock without seeing any, he resolved, as a storm was foreboded, to return. He had previously detached from the banks of the river several masses of earth filled with pupæ, which he put into a large tub full of water. His servants, who were carrying the tub home, had scarcely set it upon one of the steps of the stairs leading from his garden to the Marne, when he heard them exclaim, "What a prodigious number of ephemeræ are here!" He immediately seized one of the torches and ran to the tub, where he found every piece of earth above the surface of the water swarming with the flies, some just beginning to quit their old skin, others preparing to fly, and others already on the wing, while every where under water they were seen in a greater or less degree of forwardness. The threatened storm of rain and lightning at length coming on, he was compelled to leave the interesting scene; but, to prevent the escape of the insects, he had the tub covered with a cloth. The violence of the rain ceased in about half an hour, when he returned to the garden, and as soon as the cloth was removed from the tub he perceived that the number of the flies was prodigiously augmented, and continued to increase for some time as he stood watching them. Many flew away, and many more were drowned, but the number which had already undergone their transformation from the earth in the tub would have been sufficient to fill it, exclusively of crowds of others which the light had attracted from a distance. He again spread the cloth over the tub, and the light was held above it: immediately the cloth was almost concealed by the vast multitudes which alighted upon it, and they might have been taken by handfulls from the candlestick. What he had observed, however, at the tub, was nothing to the scene now exhibited on the banks of the river, to which he was again attracted by the the exclamations of his gardener.

"The countless numbers," he says, " of ephemera which swarmed over the water can neither be conceived nor expressed. When snow falls thickest and in the largest flakes, the air is never so completely full of them as that which we witnessed filled with ephemeræ. I had scarcely remained a few minutes in one place, when the step on which I stood was covered in every part with their bodies, from two to four inches in depth. Near the lowest step, a surface of water, of five or six feet dimensions

every way, was entirely covered with a thick layer of them, and those which the stream swept away were more than replaced by the multitudes that were continually falling. I was repeatedly compelled to abandon my station, from not being able to bear the shower of insects, which not falling perpendicularly like rain, struck me incessantly and in a manner extremely uncomfortable, pelting against every part of my face, and filling my eyes, nose, and mouth almost to suffocation. On this occasion it was no pleasant post to hold the light, for our torch-bearer had his clothes covered with the insects in a few moments, which rushed in from all quarters to overwhelm him.

"The light of the torch gave origin to a spectacle which enchanted every one who beheld it, and altogether different from a meteorological shower; even the most stupid and unobserving of my domestics were never satisfied with gazing at it. No armillary sphere was ever formed of so many circular zones in every possible direction, having the light for their common centre. Their number seemed to be infinite, crossing each other in all directions, and in every imaginable degree and inclination-all of which were more or less oblique. Each of these zones was composed of an unbroken string of ephemeræ, which followed each other close in the same line as if they had been tied together head and tail, resembling a piece of silver ribbon deeply indented on its edges, and consisting of equal triangles placed end to end-so that the angles of those that followed were supported by the base of those which preceded, the whole moving round with incredible velocity. This spectacle was caused by the wings of the insects, which alone could be distinguished. Each of these flies, after having described one or two orbits, fell to the earth, or into the water, though not in consequence of having been burned," '—pp. 373— 376.

Thus it will be seen that Mr. Rennie, in order to fill up his volume, has been obliged to enter upon portions of the history of insects, not immediately belonging to that of their transformations. In fact, his object was to combine under an attractive, or at least a novel title (for a volume) as many entertaining topics as could be deemed, either by strict construction, or by what may be called literary fiction, as connected with it. We were startled, when, turning over the last page, we found a notice stating his intention to add another volume, which is to contain such miscellaneous matter relating to insects as could not have been brought together in either of his former works. We apprehend he will find that he is overdoing the subject, though we are aware that some amusing anecdotes of bees, ants, spiders, and other insects, may be collected from the various publications that have been written upon entomology. We are bound to add, that the original contributions to the volume before us, bear but a very small proportion to the number of its pages which are gathered from other sources, and that in point of interest it is infinitely inferior to " Insect Architecture."

ART. III.-The Undying One, and other Poems. By the Hon. Mrs. Norton, 8vo. pp. 272. London: Colburn and Bentley, 1830. THE principal poem in this collection is nothing more or less than a new version of the old story of the Wandering Jew. Upon the thread of his fabled life of immortality, Mrs. Norton has, we think injudiciously, chosen to suspend a series of episodes, all freighted with the woes of unhappy love. We say injudiciously, because whatever of interest may be supposed to attach to the fortunes of that personage, is wholly apocryphal, and has, moreover, long since been exhausted by the various attempts that have been made in verse and prose to represent his endless vicissitudes. Even if it were strictly true that one man were permitted or fated to live on for many centuries, as a lesson to the world, and as a peculiar punishment for himself, it would be a circumstance so much out of the ordinary course of nature, that however it might call forth our wonder, it never would excite our sympathies. We could have nothing in common with his feelings, of joy or of sorrow. of sixty years old making love to a girl of eighteen, is already an affair sufficiently ludicrous. But when he goes on to the agreeable term of eighteen hundred years, and, like Mrs. Norton's hero, is perpetually wooing, often wedding, and always surviving the wives or partners of his numberless lives, swearing to each eternal devotion, that is to say, for five and twenty years or so-it is absurd to expect that even the most exquisite poetry could lend attraction to his history.

A man

The ambition of this lady is to be original and effective in her productions. There is something about her of Lady Morgan's "Wild Irish Girl," a good deal of enthusiasm, a copious flow of diction, a strong feeling for poetry, but scarcely a gleam of true poetic feeling. In certain circles at the fashionable end of the town she is looked upon as a genius. Nor can it be denied that she participates in the gift of talents which have been bestowed upon almost every member of the Sheridan family with such remarkable prodigality. But as yet we have seen nothing from her pen that indicates powers beyond the ordinary class of those which are busied in stuffing our circulating libraries with novels and fugitive verses. If any thing she is a shade or two below Miss Landon, from whose muse she appears to have derived all her inspiration. She rivals her in her love of balls, and lamp-lighted saloons, and diamonds and knights, and ladies fair. In her subjects she is by no means quite so select; for Mrs. Norton can tell, and a great deal too often does tell us of the misfortunes of the fallen of her sex, whose existence, and at all events whose agonies of mental pain, no woman of virtue ought to know. These engaging characters, nevertheless, seem to claim her peculiar attention; perhaps, and indeed we hope it is so, upon Mrs. Fry's principle, with the view of reclaiming