Note BZ — {358} CHAP. X.[124]

The insects here spoken of are of two kinds; the one is nearly black, its skin hard like a beetle, and not very unlike a grasshopper, and darts through the water with great ease, and with some degree of velocity. The other sort is brown, has wings, and is as soft as the common cleg-fly. The latter are the most numerous; and in some of the lakes such quantities of them are forced into the bays in gales of wind, and there pressed together in such multitudes, that they are killed, and remain there a great nuisance; for I have several times, in my inland voyages from York Fort, found it scarcely possible to land in some of those bays for the intolerable stench of those insects, which in some places were lying in putrid masses to the depth of two or three feet. It is more than probable, that the Bears occasionally feed on these dead insects.