Gnat

“ You can scratch with your claws, and bite with your teeth—so can a woman in her quarrels. I repeat that I am altogether more powerful than you; and if you doubt it, let us fight and see who will conquer." The Gnat, having sounded his horn, fastened itself upon the Lion, and stung him on the nostrils. The Lion, trying to crush him, tore himself with his claws, until he punished himself severely. The Gnat thus prevailed over the Lion, and buzzing about in a song of triumph, flew away. But shortly afterwards he became entangled in the meshes of a cobweb, and was eaten by a spider. ”

“ His God!—a Jezebel, a false idol, who sends her ships to poison my new world—mine, decreed of Rome! A curse upon the gnat!”
He appeared of a sudden strangely moved. The gnat’s particular humour, indeed, was the sting he most abhorred; the virus of its memory for ever rankled in his veins. Not eight years was it since this gnat, this Drake, this bold heretic fanatic, had, daring his edict, swept the Spanish Indies and plundered a Spanish galleon of their treasures, loaded with which he had returned to England, to be applauded and knighted by its Queen. ”

“ In process of time the pupa changes to a perfect Gnat within this shelly case, able to move, but unable to eat. The body shrinks in size, and the wings and legs are formed, both being pressed closely to the body. When the Gnat is fully developed, the pupal skin splits along the back, and opens out into a curiously boat-like shape, the front, which contains the heavier part of the insect, being much the largest, and consequently being able to bear the greatest weight. ”

“ We meet in fields beyond; be sure of it, Prinny!"
On the next night
The busy Gnat, swollen to giant size,
Pent-up within the skull, knew certainly,
As a bird knows in the egg, his hour was come.
The thrice repeated call had given him summons ...
He must out, crack the shell, out, out!
He strains, claps his wings, arches his back,
Drives in his talons, out! out! ”

“ The gnat, the ephemera, the phryganea, the libellula, hover over the water all day to drop their eggs, which are hatched in the water, and continue there all the time they are in the larva form. The mass formed by the gnat resembles a little vessel set afloat by the insect; each egg is in the form of a keel, these are curiously connected together. The gnat lays but one egg at a time, which she deposits on the water in a very ingenious and simple manner; she stretches her legs out, and crosses them, thus forming an angle to receive and hold the first egg ”

“ Every one knows the little active Gnat larvæ, with their large heads and slender bodies, much like tadpoles in miniature. When they have reached their full growth, and assume the pupal form, their shape is much changed. The fore part of the body is still more enlarged, as it has to contain the wings and legs, which have so great a proportion to the body of the perfect Gnat. And, instead of floating with its head downwards, and breathing through its tail as it did when a larva, it now floats with the head uppermost, and breathes through two little tubes. ”

“ We will begin our examination with the Gnat (Culex pipiens) , of which Réaumur, in his "Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire des Insectes," has given such a curious and complete history. "The gnat is our declared enemy," says Réaumur, in the introduction to his memoir, "and a very troublesome enemy it is. However, it is well to make its acquaintance, for if we pay a little attention we shall be forced to admire it, and even to admire the instrument with which it wounds us. ”

“ The fecundity of the Gnat is so remarkable, that in the course of one summer they might increase to the amazing number of five or six hundred thousands, if Providence had not ordered that they should become the prey of birds, who by this means prevent their multiplying more than they generally do. These insects are very annoying from their blood-sucking propensities ”

“ It may be thought worth adding that Virgil's Original Gnat resembled in its outline, as given by Donatus, the story in the Gesta. A shepherd there falls asleep in a marshy spot of ground; a serpent approaches, and is about to kill him. At this moment a gnat settles on the shepherd's face, stings, and awakens him. He instinctively applies his hand to the wounded part, and crushes the gnat. ”

“ They feed upon organisms even more diminutive than themselves, and are the prey of the smaller water beetles and tiny fish. The gnat larva obtains the animalculæ on which it feeds by means of two ciliated organs on the head. These are in constant motion, and create a current by which its food is drawn into its mouth. But, though an inhabitant of the water, the gnat even in this stage is obliged to breathe, and therefore frequently ascends close to the surface, where it draws in the air through a little tube situated at the apex of the body. ”

“ The gnat cried out to the tree, 'Hold fast, for I am going to fly off!' The palm-tree replied to her, 'I was not even aware of thy presence, so how could thy taking flight harm me?' And how, O thou one-eyed Thakîfy! could thy blame hurt us? ”

“ Now may we not say with confidence, that the sounding-winged insect looks back to the pupa, the pupa to the larva, the larva to the egg-boat? And more, that the form of the boat,—a form so essential that it could not have lived without it,—looked back to the crossed feet of the mother-gnat, the impress of whose angle its extremities sustained?
Of course we might reason thus: but yet we should be at fault; for the ringing swarm of merry Gnats has been this very evening created. ”

“ "What sort of insects do you rejoice in, where you come from?" the Gnat inquired.
"I don't rejoice in insects at all," Alice explained, "because I'm rather afraid of them——at least the large kinds. But I can tell you the names of some of them."
"Of course they answer to their names?" the Gnat remarked carelessly.
"I never knew them do it."
"What's the use of their having names," the Gnat said, "if they won't answer to them?"
"No use to them," said Alice; "but it's useful to the people that name them, I suppose. If not, why do things have names at all?" ”

“ It is, however, still more extraordinary that the gnat is able to finish its operations. Happily they do not last long; all dangers may be passed over in a minute.
"The gnat, after raising itself perpendicularly, draws its two front legs from the sheath, and brings them forward. ”

“ The noisy spouter, the obnoxious demagogue, the troublesome striker attract attention; the vast patient herd live and die almost unnoticed. There is no reason for supposing, however, that the gnat takes the neglect of man to heart, fond as he undoubtedly is of man’s companionship. In this respect he stands almost, if not quite alone among created things, for the attentions paid to man by the flea, the bug, and the mosquito are strictly selfish. ”

“ The formost horns or feelers, were like those of the former Gnat.
One of these Gnats I have suffer’d to pierce the skin of my hand, with its proboscis, and thence to draw out as much blood as to fill its belly as full as it could hold, making it appear very red and transparent; and this without any further pain, then whilst it was sinking in its proboscis, as it is also in the stinging of Fleas: a good argument, that these creatures do not wound the skin, and suck the blood out of enmity and revenge, but for meer necessity, and to satisfy their hunger. ”

“ Some weeks after, let us dig up the pollen loaves of the Bee. We shall find them crumbled up, frittered away. We shall see two or three little worms, with pointed mouths, moving in the yellow flour scattered over the floor of the cell. These are the Gnat’s children. With them we sometimes find the lawful owner, the grub-worm of the Bee, but stunted and thin with fasting. His greedy companions, without otherwise hurting him, deprive him of the best of everything. The poor creature dwindles, shrivels up and soon disappears from view. The Gnat-worms make of his corpse one mouthful the more. ”

“ His jacket and trousers were made of lilac poppy petals instead of red ones, and he had no light on his head.
'Listen, Basil,' said the little lilac-coloured creature, and with a gentle voice, like a mother telling fairy tales to her child, he began to speak:
'A gnat was born on the moors. [94] It stood on its thin little legs, it spread its wings, and thought to itself: "It is time to fly after some booty! If I meet a man or a bull, I will eat him up." ”

“ Whether or not any particular species of insect was signified by the word "gnat" is very doubtful, and in all probability the word is only used to express the contrast between the smallest known insects and the largest known beasts. Gnats, especially those species which are popularly known by the word "mosquito," are very plentiful in many parts of Palestine, especially those which are near water, and are as annoying there as in other lands which they inhabit. ”

“ This bears both in point of size, appearance, and habits, a much closer relation to the mosquito than to the gnat, and it may, indeed, be termed the English mosquito. It is many times larger than the gnat which is the subject of our remarks, has dark limbs and body, a stinging proboscis, and a bare head. The gnat is scarce more substantial than a cobweb, and has upon its head a lovely plume. It is silent, or, at least, if it utters a sound, its vibrations are too rapid for the ears of man to detect. ”

“ Fish scales, bee stings and birds’ feathers all came under his notice. The foot of a fly he described with wonderful accuracy; the scales of a butterfly’s wing and the head of a fly were all studied and described in detail. On the life history of the gnat he made many blunders, but he saved his reputation by remarkable observations upon the Chelifer, a curious parasite of the fly which we mention in our pages, and upon the silver fish, a little creature which frequents sugar and starch. ”

“ Their efforts to crawl upward over the slippery surface only land them weak and discouraged where they started. The projecting ledge overhead prevents them from using their wings; the passage between the ledge and the spathe is far too narrow to permit flight. Now, if a gnat be persevering, he will presently discover a gap in the flap where the spathe folds together in front, and through this tiny opening he makes his escape, only to enter another pulpit, like the trusted, but too trusting, messenger he is, and leave some of the vitalizing pollen on the fertile florets awaiting his coming. ”

“ Indeed, these insects are so eager to take their flight, that they mostly leave behind them either a leg or a part of a wing on their departure. There is another species of gnat,3241 too, that grows in the fig, which in its indolence and malignity strongly resembles the drone of the bee-hive, and shows itself a deadly enemy to the one that is of real utility ”

“ Well may the gnat be transparent, for it is doubtful whether it takes any solid food from the time of its emergence from its pupa case to that when, its existence terminated, it drops lifeless on the surface of a stream. It drinks, however, and a dewdrop is sufficient to afford refreshment to thousands. ”

“ Any one who observes how deep the fore part of the boat is, and how near the edges of its sides are to the water, forgets for the time being that the gnat is an insect that he would willingly destroy at other times. ”

“ To make life even more miserable, another gnat had stung him on another knuckle,—a voracious creature, evidently, so bent on destruction that it had made a special trip up from the valley below for this nefarious purpose, since insects do not commonly inhabit Machu Picchu. Now, it might be that the first bite had not injected the dread uta, but surely no ordinary man could hope to survive a second. ”

“ As the black-flies do not readily enter a dark room, light is excluded from stables as much as possible during the gnat season. If teams must be used in the open field while gnats are abroad, they may be protected against the attacks of the gnats by applying cotton-seed oil or axle grease to the surface, especially to the less hairy parts of the animals, at least twice a day. ”

“ And the first is, Whether all those things that we suppose to be bred from corruption and putrifaction, may not be rationally suppos’d to have their origination as natural as these Gnats, who, ’tis very probable, were first dropt into this Water, in the form of Eggs. Those Seeds or Eggs must certainly be very small, which so small a creature as a Gnat yields, and therefore, we need not wonder that we find not the Eggs themselves, some of the younger of them, which I have observ’d, having not exceeded a tenth part of the bulk they have afterwards come to ”

“ When the perfect insect is formed inside the pupa case, the air contained within the latter causes it to float on the surface. The gnat breaks through the upper side and stands upon the skin it has quitted, which serves as a little raft until it has attained sufficient strength to fly. ”

“ Why do we see, in tanks of rain water, insects rising to the surface?
Because numerous insects pass through their first stages of existence in water, and among them the common gnat. The gnats of the previous season having deposited their eggs on the sides of the water-butt, the warm water developes them, and the larvæ of the gnats appear (Fig. 81; c natural size of larva; b larva magnified) . ”