Crane-flies
The other visitation is the crane-fly or daddy-longlegs, which moves in hosts over meadow and lawn and at night invaded houses all through .September, presumably driven by one fanatically overpowering impulse, to relieve its ovipositor of eggs. No creature is more one-idea'd, as Dr. Johnson said of chattering girls. They are so possessed by this purpose that it becomes a steady wind driving them onward Willy-nilly, anywhere and everywhere, with stilts helplessly dangling in the air. They seem to have no volition of their own at all, to be the mere automata of a biological will external to themselves. They do not so much fly as float, at once purposeless and purposeful, aerial and blunder- ing, with no destination and yet the most determined goal. They seem equally void of any sense of danger or obstacle, and come to a stop on their spidery shanks simply because a solid object gets in the way. One of the most grotesque of Nature's children, and provided by her with strangeness but no beauty, they are at once imbecile and pitiful, a parody of Bernard Shaw's life-force.
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