Myrmeleonidæ—Ant-lions.
When children meet with the funnel-shaped pitfalls of the larva of the Ant-lion, Myrmeleon formicales, they are wont to put their heads close to the ground and softly sing ooloo-ooloo-ooloo, till the larva, mistaking the sound for that of a fly escaping his trap, throws up a shower of sand to bring its supposed victim down again.
Ant-lions are held in great esteem in many sections of our country, so much so that they are not suffered to be in any way injured.
ORDER V.
HYMENOPTERA.
Uroceridæ—Sirex.
In a work called “Ephemerides des curieux de la nature,” is an observation apparently relative to this family of insects, which, if true, would be very extraordinary indeed. It is there said, that in the town of Czierck and its environs, there were seen in 1679 some unknown winged insects which, with their stings, mortally wounded both men and beasts. They fell abruptly upon men without provocation, and attached themselves to the naked parts of the body: the sting was immediately followed by a hard tumor, and if care was not taken of the wound within the first three hours, by hastily extracting the poison from it, the patient died in a few days after. These insects killed five and thirty men in this diocese, and a great number of oxen and horses. Toward the end of September, the winds brought some of them into a small town on the confines of Silesia and Poland; but they were so feeble on account of the cold, that they did but little mischief there. Eight days after, they all disappeared. These animals have all of them four wings, six feet, and carry under the belly a long sting provided with a sheath, which opens and separates in two. They make a very sharp noise in attacking men. Some of them are ornamented with yellow circles (Sirex gigas, or S. fusicornis? M. Latreille), and others are similar to them in all respects, but they have the back altogether black, and their stings are more venomous (S. spectrum or juvencus?). The author of these observations gives an extended description of the species with the yellow circles, which he accompanies with figures, in which the character of Sirex may be clearly distinguished.[477]
Cynipidæ—Gall-flies.
In the spring of 1694, some Galls hung down like chains upon the oaks in Germany, and the common people, who had never observed them before, imagined them to be magical knots.[478]
A very old and common superstition is, that every oak-apple contains either a maggot, a fly, or a spider: the first foretelling famine, the second war, and the third, the spider, pestilence. Matthiolus gravely affirms this conceit to be true;[479] and the learned Sir Thomas Browne, in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica, has thought it worth his while, with much gravity, to explode it. He, however, while combating one popular error, falls himself into another, for want of that philosophical knowledge of insects which later times have succeeded in obtaining. We pass this by, and hurry to his conclusion: “We confess the opinion may hold some verity in analogy, or emblematical phancy; for pestilence is properly signified by the spider, whereof some kinds are of a very venomous nature: famine by maggots, which destroy the fruits of the earth; and war not improperly by the fly, if we rest in the phancy of Homer, who compares the valiant Grecian unto a fly. Some verity it may also have in itself, as truly declaring the corruptive constitution in the present sap and nutrimental juice of the tree; and may consequently discover the disposition of the year according to the plenty or kinds of those productions; for if the putrefying juices of bodies bring forth plenty of flies and maggots, they give forth testimony of common corruption, and declare that the elements are full of the seeds of putrefaction, as the great number of caterpillars, gnats, and ordinary insects do also declare. If they run into spiders, they give signs of higher putrefaction, as plenty of vipers and scorpions are confessed to do; the putrefying materials producing animals of higher mischief according to the advance and higher strain of corruption.”[480]