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LONG-LEGGED GNATS.

Besides the above, there is a mixed multitude of small Tipula, or long-legged flies, much resembling, and often confounded with, the gnat; though the common gnat is sufficiently distinguished by the singular transformations of its aquatic larva, described already in A Life of Buoyancy.' In their last and perfect stage, many, however, of these Tipulidan flies, or gnats, are full as buoyant as those to which the latter appellation more properly belongs: like them, they are often alert and joyous, while other insects are dead or dormant; like them, fly unwetted in the shower, and often, like them, dancing in the winter shade, hold, in defiance of the gloomiest season, their "mid-day sports and revelry."

But it is not with such diminutives that we should conclude handsomely our notice of the line of Longlegs. Let us return instead to the stilted "fathers" or mothers of the tribe, with a random guess at the derivation of one of their incongruous appellations. Why they should be called "Tailors” we cannot tell, unless, as animals made up of legs, they may be considered but as fractions-ninth parts, perhaps, of an insect. Why creatures never known to spin a thread should sometimes also be named "Jenny Spinners," was, to us, no less a mystery, till, on a summer's day, its possible solution flashed upon us. We were sitting in a shady lane, when, on the turf that bordered it, what should appear but a single Mother Longlegs-neither flying nor walking, but whirling and spinning round in a strange eccentric manner; her wings

and fore legs beating the air, her hind ones bent at their angles so as to let the end of her pointed body, which was held bolt upright, come in contact with the ground. Here, then, was our "Jenny Spinner," not thus spinning for amusement— merely to make herself, like a votary of the waltz, drunken with delight, but gravely spinning mischief to the grass. With the united points of her sharp shining forceps she was gimletting the turf, and in every hole dropping one or more, perhaps, of her grain-like eggs, germs minute of future longlegged spinners, which, to an atom multitude of surrounding creepers, were to be as ostriches to wrens-as camelopards to field-mice!

How vask to an Emmek, its stupendous elevation.

WHAT a striking contrast is there between the two insects which figure most conspicuously in the annals of antiquity— the butterfly and the dung-beetle! The former was regarded by the ancients as an emblem of the soul, the latter was made by them an object of the soul's worship. The one, all beauty, vivacity, and buoyancy; having no business in life but pleasure-no habitation but among the beautiful flowers,

THE EGYPTIAN SCARABÆUS.

and breathing the perfumed air of summer.

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The other, in

form dark and repulsive, in habits dull and laborious; its abode beneath the earth, or within the loathsome substances which cumber earth's surface, and its favourite atmosphere one of steaming fetidity thence exhaled.

Yet this, the Scarabæus sacer, or Sacred Beetle, was the creature which the wise and civilized Egyptians imaged on their sepulchral monuments, enclosed with their embalmed bodies, carved on their lofty columns, inscribed on their astronomical tables, looked on as symbolic of the world, and of the glorious sun,—nay, adored as a visible deity!

What lamentable darkness! we are ready to exclaim, looking back with contemptuous pity on the beclouded ignorance from whence we have emerged; even though the learned tell us that under the above and other seemingly the most absurd of Egyptian superstitions, was veiled a hidden wisdom. The priest-ridden, hood-winked "million" saw, however, it is probable, nothing more in their Apis, their Ibis, and their Scarabæus, than a beast, bird, or insect god, so regarded on account of some beneficial or formidable quality, exciting gratitude or terror; the priests themselves only viewing them in a more refined sense as symbols of the Deity, in one or other of His divine attributes. In the Scarabæus the male insect closely resembles the female, and, contrary to insect usage, is accustomed to participate in her labours. On these accounts it has been supposed that the Egyptians, not distinguishing between

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THE EGYPTIAN SCARABÆUS.

the individuals of each sex, imagined that the Scarabæus was of both combined, and, under this mistaken notion, adopted it as an appropriate emblem of a self-created and supreme First Cause; and whenever, therefore, they desired, in their hieroglyphic writing, to designate a being self-produced, or to express an idea of a birth, a father, or the world, they represented a Scarabæus.

This insect was also more especially the symbol of their goddess Neith, whose attribute was supreme power in governing the works of creation, and whose glory was considered to be increased rather than diminished by the presence of another power named Phta, the Creator. Neith and Phta, thus considered as two attributes of one spirit (the third being Cneph, or Divine Goodness), are, in their combination, further represented by the supposed union of both sexes in the Scarabæus. As typical of Neith, the insect was carved or painted on rings, and worn by soldiers, in token of homage to that Power which disposeth the fate of battles. It was also thus worn, and otherwise employed to designate a warrior, from the manly bearing connected with its supposed paternal birth; and, sculptured on astronomical tables, or on columns, it expressed the Divine wisdom which regulates the universe and enlightens man.

Other symbolic meanings were attached to the Scarabæus, founded on certain peculiarities in its habits and external form.

The modern representative of the Scarabæus sacer (imported from Africa into southern Europe) is the Pill-Beetle, so named from its practice of moulding round pellets of dung, depositing