How do the gnats there playing under the horse-chestnut boughs escape being struck down by the heavy raindrops, each one of which looks as if it would drown so small a creature?
The numbers of insects far exceed all that words can express: consider the clouds of midges that often dance over a stream.

One day, chancing to glance at a steeple, I saw what looked like thin smoke issuing from the top of it.
Now it shot out in a straight line from the gilded beak of the weathercock, now veered about, or declined from the vane.

It was an innumerable swarm of insects, whose numbers made them visible at that height.
Some insects are much more powerful than would be supposed.

A garden was enclosed with fresh palings formed of split oak so well seasoned (split oak is the hardest of wood) that it was difficult to train any creepers against them, for a nail could not be driven in without the help of a bradawl.

Passing along the path one afternoon I heard a peculiar rasping sound like a very small saw at work, and found it proceeded from four wasps biting the oak for the materials of their nest.