good account, has succeeded in distilling an excellent _lamp-oil_ from their bodies, and offers tenpence a bushel for them. From seventeen bushels he extracted twenty-eight quarts of good oil! In Hungary, a kind of grease is obtained from them which is useful for carriage wheels. The ingenuity of man may thus even procure good out of a very formidable evil, although the mischief done by the cockchafer larva undoubtedly far exceeds the benefit it confers upon its captors in the amount of oil extracted from it. An insect almost equally familiar to all persons is the long-legged gnat, of whom the famous children's rhyme runs:-- "'Old father long-legs' would not say his prayers; Take him by the left leg and throw him down stairs." Many of our farmers would be glad, no doubt, if taking him by the left leg would keep him out of their meadows, for there this insect commits fearful ravages in the larva form. In some parts of England it has as completely destroyed the pasture-grass as if it had been consumed by fire. In the spring of 1813, hundreds of acres of pasture in the rich district of _Sunk Island_ in Holderness were entirely destroyed by it, being rendered as completely brown as if they had suffered a three months' drought, and no other vegetation but that of a few thistles was left on land, which, at more favoured periods, was more than commonly luxuriant. On a square foot of the turf being dug up from the affected spot, the enormous number of _two hundred and ten_ larvæ was counted in it. Fortunately, the next year showed a very different result, for then it was difficult on careful search to find one! In some districts of France it is also very destructive, the grass of large tracts being so completely destroyed by it, that enough food for the maintenance of the cattle is not to be obtained. These larvæ, like the last-named, appear to destroy by eating away the roots of the grass. From these and the foregoing facts, entomology teaches us to regard these two insects, upon which we commonly look with compassion, as occasionally becoming the formidable, though indirect, enemies of man. The scientific name for "Father Long-legs" is _Tipula oleracea_. The French call them oddly enough milliners, or tailors, (_couturiéres, tailleurs_,) a name of which it is harder to guess the origin than the common one of father-long-legs, which is sufficiently expressive of one of the features of the insect in the perfect state: perhaps the French tailors are distinguished for being very long and thin! [Illustration: _The Gamma Moth and Larva._]