It is remarkable, that though most of them sit on the battlements and roofs, yet many hang or cling for some time by their claws against the surface of the walls, in a manner not practised by them at any other time of their remaining with us.

The swallows seem to delight more in holding their assemblies on trees.

November 3, 1789.- Two swallows were seen this morning at Newton vicarage house, hovering and settling on the roofs and out-buildings. None have been observed at Selborne since October 11. It is very remarkable, that after the hirundines have disappeared for some weeks, a few are occasionally seen again; sometimes, in the first week in November, and that only for one day. Do they not withdraw and slumber in some hiding-place during the interval? for we cannot suppose they had migrated to warmer climes, and so returned again for one day. Is it not more probable that they are awakened from sleep, and, like the bats, are come forth to collect a little food? Bats appear at all seasons through the autumn and spring months, when the thermometer is at fifty, because then phalene and moths are stirring. These swallows looked like

young ones.

*

WAGTAILS. While the cows are feeding in the moist lowpasture, broods of wagtails, white and gray, run round them, close up to their noses, and under their very bellies, availing themselves of the flies that settle on their legs, and probably finding worms and larvæ that are roused by the trampling of their feet. Nature is such an economist, that the most

* Of their migration, the proofs are such as will scarcely admit of a doubt. Sir Charles W ager and Captain Wright saw vast flocks of them at sea, when on their passage from one country to another. Our author, Mr White, saw what he deemed the actual migration of these birds, and which he has described at p. 78 of his History of Selborne; and of their congregating together on the roofs of churches and other buildings, and on trees, previous to their departure, many instances occur; particularly, I once observed a large flock of house-martens on the roof of the church here at Cat-field, which acted exactly in the manner here described by Mr White, sometimes preening their feathers, and spreading their wings to the sun, and then flying of all together, but soon returning to their former situation. The greatest part of these birds seemed to be young ones.- MARKWICK.

Wilson, Audubon, and Richardson, all attest the migration of the swallow and its congeners, in America; and every author, ancient and modern, of whatever country, describe these birds as changing their residence during winter. ED.

incongruous animals can avail themselves of each other! Interest makes strange friendships. *

WRYNECKS. These birds appear on the grass-plots and walks; they walk a little as well as hop, and thrust their bills into the turf, in quest, I conclude, of ants, which are their food. While they hold their bills in the grass, they draw out their prey with their tongues, which are so long as to be coiled round their heads.

GROSBEAK.- Mr B. shot a cock grosbeak, which he had observed to haunt his garden for more than a fortnight. I began to accuse this bird of making sad havock among the buds of the cherries, gooseberries, and wall-fruit of all the neighbouring orchards. Upon opening its crop, or craw, no buds were to be seen; but a mass of kernels of the stones of fruits. Mr B. observed, that this bird frequented the spot where plum trees grow; and that he had seen it with somewhat hard in its mouth, which it broke with difficulty: these were the stones of damsons. The Latin ornithologists call this bird coccothraustes, i.e. berry-breaker, because, with its large horny beak, it cracks and breaks the shells of stone fruits for the sake of the seed or kernel. Birds of this sort are rarely seen in England, and only in winter. †

* Birds continually avail themselves of particular and unusual circumstances to procure their food: thus wagtails keep playing about the noses and legs of cattle as they feed, in quest of flies and other insects which abound near those animals; and great numbers of them will follow close to the plough to devour the worms, &c. that are turned up by that instrument. The red-breast attends the gardener when digging his borders; and will, with great familiarity and tameness, pick out the worms almost close to his spade, as I have frequently seen. Starlings and magpies very often sit on the backs of sheep and deer to pick out their ticks.MARKWICK.

+ I have never seen this rare bird but during the severest cold of the hardest winters; at which season of the year, I have had in my possession two or three that were killed in this neighbourhood in different years. MARKWICK.

On the second week of September, 1832, Mr Greenhow, surgeon of North Shields, mentions that a flock of Egyptian geese was seen beside the Tweed, at Carham, two of which, while nibbling grass on the margin of the river, were shot by Ralph Stephenson, gamekeeper. - ED.

OBSERVATIONS ON INSECTS AND VERMES.

INSECTS IN GENERAL.

THE day and night insects occupy the annuals alternately. the papilios, musca, and apes, are succeeded at the close of day by phalane, earwigs, woodlice, &c. In the dusk of the evening, when beetles begin to buzz, partridges begin to call: these two circumstances are exactly coincident.

Ivy is the last flower that supports the hymenopterous and dipterous insects. On sunny days, quite on to November, they swarm on trees covered with this plant; and when they disappear, probably retire under the shelter of its leaves, concealing themselves between its fibres and the trees which it entwines.†

Spiders, woodlice, lepisme in cupboards and among sugar, some empedes, gnats, flies of several species, some phalænæ in hedges, earth-worms, &c. are stirring at all times, when winters are mild; and are of great service to those soft-billed birds that never leave us.

On every sunny day, the winter through, clouds of insects, usually called gnats, (I suppose tipule and empedes,) appear sporting and dancing over the tops of the evergreen trees in the shrubbery, and frisking about as if the business of generation was still going on. Hence it appears that these diptera (which by their sizes appear to be of different species) are not subject to a torpid state in the winter, as most winged insects At night, and in frosty weather, and when it rains and blows, they seem to retire into those trees. They often are out in a fog.‡

are.

Earwigs, although it is not generally known, are capable of flying. This is mentioned by Kirby and Spence; and Mr Denson, of Bayswater, establishes this fact by experiment. He says, "Each, before taking flight, aided, or effected the expansion of its snow-white membranous wings with the forceps in its tail, which it turned over its back, and used with admirable adroitness. They flew ably, and in curves of short diameters." ED.

This I have often observed, having seen bees and other winged insects swarming about the flowers of the ivy very late in the autumn.MARKWICK.

This I have also seen, and have frequently observed swarms of little winged insects playing up and down in the air in the middle of the winter, even when the ground has been covered with snow. - MARKWICK.

HUMMING IN THE AIR.There is a natural occurrence to be met with upon the highest part of our down in hot summer days, which always amuses me much, without giving me any satisfaction with respect to the cause of it; and that is, a loud audible humming of bees in the air, though not one insect is to be seen.* This sound is to be heard distinctly the whole common through, from the Money-dells, to Mr White's avenue gate. Any person would suppose that a large swarm of bees was in motion, and playing about over his head. This noise was heard last week, on June twenty-eighth.

Resounds the living surface of the ground,

Nor undelightful is the ceaseless hum

To him who muses

at noon.

Thick in yon stream of light, a thousand ways,
Upward and downward, thwarting and convolved,
The quivering nations sport.

THOMSON'S Seasons.

CHAFFERS.- · Cock-chaffers seldom abound oftener than once in three or four years; when they swarm, they deface the trees and hedges. Whole woods of oaks are stripped bare by them.+

Chaffers are eaten by the turkey, the rook, and the housesparrow.

The scarabæus solstitialis first appears about June twenty-six: they are very punctual in their coming out every year. They are a small species, about half the size of the May-chaffer, and are known in some parts by the name of the fern-chaffer.‡

*This sound does not proceed from bees, as our author supposes, but from the common gnat (culex pipiens.) We particularly noticed this in August, 1832, in a lane which leads from the back of Warriston Crescent, to the Newhaven road. On the third, the air was very hot and the sound proceeded from the top of some high trees. Next day we passed the same road; the air was more cold and somewhat moist, when these gnats were sporting in the sunbeams, close to the top of a hedge, which was not more than four feet high. This mighty congregation of gnats formed a lengthened column of two hundred yards, by about a yard in breadth, and two yards in depth; their numbers we believe to have been greater than there have been human beings on our globe, from the creation to the present time. -ED..

+ Respect being had to the size of the cock-chaffer, it is six times stronger than a horse; and if the elephant, as Linnæus observed, was strong in proportion to the stag-beetle, it would be able to pull up rocks by the root, and to level mountains; were the lion and tiger as strong and as swift for their magnitude, as the cicindela and the beetle, nothing could escape them by precaution, or withstand them by strength. ED.

A singular circumstance relative to the cock-chaffer, or, as it is called here, the May-bug, (scarabæus mélolontha,) happened this year (1800. ),

PTINUS PECTINICORNIS.- -Those maggots that make wormholes in tables, chairs, bed-posts, &c. and destroy wooden fur niture, especially where there is any sap, are the larva of the ptinus pectinicornis. This insect, it is probable, deposits its eggs on the surface, and the worms eat their way in.

In their holes, they turn into their pupa state, and so come forth winged in July: eating their way through the valances or curtains of a bed, or any other furniture that happens to obstruct their passage.

They seem to be most inclined to breed in beech; hence beech will not make lasting utensils or furniture. If their eggs are deposited on the surface, frequent rubbing will preserve wooden furniture.*

BLATTA ORIENTALIS, (COCKROACH.)- A neighbour complained to me that her house was overrun with a kind of black beetle, or, as she expressed herself, with a kind of blackbob, which swarmed in her kitchen when they got up in the morning before daybreak.

Soon after this account, I observed an unusual insect in one of my dark chimney closets, and find since, that in the night, they swarm also in my kitchen. On examination, I soon ascertained the species to be the blatta orientalis of Linnæus, and the blatta molendinaria of Mouffet. The male is winged; the female is not, but shews somewhat like the rudiments of wings, as if in the pupa state.

These insects belonged originally to the warmer parts of America, and were conveyed from thence by shipping to the

My gardener, in digging some ground, found, about six incnes under the surface, two of these insects alive, and perfectly formed, so early as the twenty-fourth of March. When he brought them to me, they appeared to be as perfect and as much alive as in the midst of suminer, crawling about as briskly as ever; yet I saw no more of this insect till the twenty-second of May, when it began to make its appearance. How comes it, that though it was perfectly formed so early as the twentyfourth of March, it did not shew itself above ground till nearly two months afterwards?-MARKWICK.

* Naturalists have observed, that the male broods of insects invariably appear earlier than the female broods. Professor Rennie notices, that upon the leaf of a poplar tree, of three eggs of the puss moth, (cerura vinula,) which he found, two were hatched about a fortnight before the other. The first were males, and the last a female; thus distinctly proving, that eggs from which females are produced are longer of hatching. As they were found on the same leaf, they were of course presumed to be laid by the same parent; at the same time, the difference in the time of hatching could not depend upon any atmospherical cause. -ED.