Thursday, March 6, was the day of Excited Insects, or Ching Che, according to the Chinese farmer's Nature calendar. This date marks the beginning of a 15-day period when members of the insect world begin to make their appearance in numbers, either breaking their long winter's sleep or emerging from the pupal or chrysalis stage in which they have spent the colder months of the year.
For general purposes the term insect may be used to embrace, not only the true insects of the class Insecta, but all the terrestrial arthropods, such as the spiders, scorpions, ticks and mites of the class Arachnida, the centipedes and millipedes of the class Myriapoda, and the woodlice belonging to the class Crustacea, which otherwise is mainly aquatic and predominantly marine in its distribution. To most people all these creeping crawling creatures are insects.
As a matter of fact the Chinese go a good deal further in their zoological classification and include almost every animal that is not a bird, a mammal, a fish or other aquatic form in the category of insects. Thus the day of Excited Insects refers, not only io the true insects, most of which are characterized by the possession of wings and have the power of flight, but also io the many other terrestrial arthropoda, as Well as to such creatures as worms, slugs, snails, frogs, toads, lizards, turtles and snakes. For instance, the Five Poisonous Insects of the Chinese are the snake, centipede, scorpion, toad and spider, with the little gecko or wall lizard sometimes taking the place of the spider. In the Pekingese colloquial dialect the snake is often called chang chung, which literally means "long worm."
Be that as it may, we have now reached the time of year when all these lower forms of animal life begin to assume the ascendency in the garden and country side. The air will soon be resounding to the hum of insect wings, and in the grass underfoot or amongst the rocks and stones by the wayside various creatures may be ing about. their business.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.