"Horseflies, gnats and mosquitoes add to the joys of living throughout the entire length of the Yukon valley.

Are Englishmen hedge-gnats, who only take their sport when the sun shines?

What is most troublesome, there, are flies and gnats, which are very numerous near the rivers; but, as the country is cleared, they disperse and go away.

Think on the humming afternoon Within some busy wood in June, When nettle patches, drunk with the sun, Are fiery outposts of the shade; While gnats keep up a dizzy reel, And the grasshopper, perched upon his blade, Loud drones his fairy threshing-wheel: Hour when some poet-wit might feign The drowsy tune of the throbbing air

When morning came, we fancied there would be a relief for us, but it only brought a worse pest, in the shape of swarms of black gnats, similar to those which so tormented me in Nubia.

I know of no infliction so terrible as these gnats, which you cannot drive away, and which assail ears, eyes, and nostrils in such quantities that you become mad and desperate in your efforts to eject them.

Our nights, however, were tormented by small white gnats, which stung us unmercifully.

We took possession of a shop, which the good-natured merchant offered us, and were about to spread our provisions upon the counter, when the gnats and mosquitoes fairly drove us away.

The swallows and swifts, untirable on their wings, but too gentle to hold their own in a jostling crowd, soared away after the midges and May-flies and pestilent gnats that rise from marsh and pond to hold their joyous dances under the blue dome.

We do, indeed, growl at the gnats of a summer evening and think ourselves very ill-used.

They are larger than common bats, their wings are broad, soft and silent, like those of the owl, they sleep in caves, tombs and ruins, they do not flutter in the open air, but swiftly traverse gloomy avenues and shady glades, their prey is not gnats and midges, but the "droning beetle," the death's head moth, the cockchafer, croaking frogs, sleeping birds and human blood.

Sometimes, as we glide, always noiselessly, beneath the overhanging foliage and tangled vines along shore, what myriads of gayly winged insectsbrilliant dragon-flies, mammoth gnats, preposterous mosquitoesswarm about our heads, disturbed from their gambols by the laughter and songs aboard our moving craft!

* I felt, I felt, that in this townlet, save the water-gnats of Norway, was no living thing; that the hum and the savour of Eternity filled, and wrapped, and embalmed it.

In warm weather, especially in the spring, the slaves keep up a smoke, or fire and smoke, all night, to drive away the gnats and musketoes, which are very troublesome in all the low country of the south; so much so that the whites sleep under frames with nets over them, knit so fine that the musketoes cannot fly through them.

to see the aged sire beating off the swarms of gnats and musketoes in the warm weather, and shivering in the straw, or bending over a few coals in the winter, clothed in rags.

Notwithstanding the salubrity of the climate of Morocco, a residence there is rendered miserable, by the multitudes of scorpions, serpents, gnats, and bugs, which infest the town and its neighbourhood.

Feeble as these attacks were, their number, like that of the gnats described by Spenser, seems to have irritated Dryden to exert the power of his satire, and, like the blast of the northern wind, to sweep away at once these clamorous and busy, though ineffectual assailants.

"As when a swarm of gnats at eventide Out of the fennes of Allan doe arise, Their murmuring small trompetts sownden wide, Whiles in the aire their clustring army flies, That as a cloud doth seeme to dim the skies; No man nor beast may rest or take repast For their sharp wounds and noyous injuries, Till the fierce northern wind with blustring blast Doth blow them quite away, and in the ocean cast.

And after that we noted to the northward, and very high, Gresham's fighting machines hanging high over Naples like an evening swarm of gnats.

In flitting among the branches, or darting into the air for gnats, his colors make him look like a tiny Oriole.

"Barney is a charming neighbor, who should be welcome in every homesociable, musical, and very useful in destroying the flies and gnats that worry horses and cattle.

," said Mr. Grey, "you cannot get rid of the gnats of the world.

His situation being reported at the ships, he was removed to a hut in the neighbourhood, where the dampness and the intolerable multitude of gnats were sufficient to have destroyed him.

Painted butterflies and gnats circled in the warm air; green lizards gamboled among the rocks that cut the turf.

Joyous bands of gnats, like wild little intoxicated maenads, circled and hummed about our heads as we drifted slowly on; while, far away and mellowed by distance, we heard the brazen music of the fair.