dred, as a fpecies of Echinus has, according to M. de Reaumur. See Memoires de l'Academie Royale des Sciences, 1710, and 1712. Befides this prodigious number of feet, thefe Echini, according to the fame author, have thirteen hundred horns, fimilar to thofe of fails, which they can put out and draw in at pleasure, and from the extremities of which, they exprefs a kind of glue, by which they attach themselves to the bodies they want to fix on, that they may not be carried away by the agitation of the water of the fea.

PAGE 46, 1. 17,

Thofe that eat other infects. All flies whofe maggots eat infects, are not flies with two wings. The greater part have four which are called Ichneumon flies, and M. Leffer himself places them among the infects with four wings. These infects have borrowed the name of Ichneumon from a cer-. tain amphibious rat of Egypt fo called. This rat deftroys the egg of the crocodile, and it is faid it can find its way into the belly of that animal to prey upon its liver.

PAGE 46, 1. 20.

*The Ricinus volans. This is the Hippobofca equina of Linnaeus.

PAGE 47, 1. 4.

A powder firewed over them. This powder feen in the microscope confifts of flat lamine or plates of a regular figure. Their anterior edge is generally indented like the teeth of a faw, and their posterior extremity terminates in a point. They have likewife pretty often different fides, Some of thefe plates likewife are channelled; I know fome that have fixty furrows. This powder or rather these plates are not fcattered at random on the wings of lepidopterous infects; they are there ranged with a great deal of art, and laid over one another like tiles on a houfe. Each plate is inferted by its apex, into the membraneous and transparent part of the wing, and the affemblage of their different colours forms thofe beautiful fhades which we admire in them.

PAGE 47, 1. 5.

Have four wings. It is fo general a rule that all lepi. dopterous infects have four wings, that one would be inclined to believe it without any exception. But I have found a

caterpillar

caterpillar of the Geometræ kind, about feven lines long, of a pale green colour, with a head compreffed and forked, and with two points at the extremity of its abdomen, which produced a well formed butterfly, having, befides the four wings common to all butterflies, between its upper and under wings, two smaller ones, cil'ated and folded double Indeed they did not feem to have been of great ufe to it in flying, but they certainly deferved the name of wings, as they had ali the appearance of them. As I have never observed more than one caterpillar of that fpeees, I fhall not decide whether this fingularity was a lufus naturæ, or a character peculiar to that fpecies. I know however that infects afford few examples of monsters with more members than are neceffary for them, and this makes me think that the fix wings might be natural to the species I mentioned. PAGE 50, 1. 13.

Sea-Stars. It would seem that Mr Leffer confiders SeaStars as animals without feet. The rays of fome of them may however well be confidered as fuch, fince there are fpecies which move them, and use them for walking; but even though this fhould not be the cafe, there are Sea-stars that have rays provided with a great number of feet as we have already remarked. As to thofe fpecies, they cannot be ranked among infects deftitute of feet. Befides, in the author's enumeration, he has forgot to mention fnails, flugs and many fhelled animals which would confiderably have augmented his lift.

The class of infects with two feet. See what has been faid on thefe different claffes in the preceeding Chapter.

Although Mr Leffer's Catalogue of infects be pretty confiderable, it is however far from comprehending all the infects known. He confines his clafs of butterflies to the number of 135; but Mad. Merian alone has difcovered upwards of 260, including thofe of Surinam. I have, in less than four years, found above 340 fpecies of butterflies, in the fpace of about a league in circuit; and I do not doubt but a little application will furnish me with many

more.

PAGE 51, 1. 4.

And fo progreffively. Mr Leffer gives us here but a vague

As fomething more

idea of the multiplication of infects. decifive, I fhall relate an experiment I made on the fubject. Although one of the most common, it will give us a more accurate idea than that in the text. The Experiment was made with the moth figured by Goedart Part 1. Exp. 59, (Phalæna antiqua.) A neft of about 350 eggs, which I had from a fingle female of this moth, produced as many little caterpillars. As it would have been inconvenient to have fed fo many, I took only eighty, which I brought up. All of them underwent their transformations, and came to their perfect state, except five which died. Amongst all these however I had but fifteen females; whether the males are naturally less numerous in this fpecies, or whether it happened by chance I know not. But let us fuppofe for a moment that it always happens fo, I reason in this manner: If eighty eggs gave fifteen prolific females, the neft of 350 would have given at leaft 65. These 65 females, fuppofing them as fertile as their mother, would have produced in the fecond generation 22,750 caterpillars, among which there would have been at least 4265 females, which again would have given birth to 1,492,750 caterpillars for the third generation, a number greater than according to Mr Leffer's calculation, the third generation of all his 765 different infects. Befides, the caterpillar I am talking of is not one of the most prolific. I know fome that produce double the number at least. And what is this in comparison with certain viviparous flies, which produce towards 20,000 young, at a fingle birth; of which confequently a single fly, fuppofing the number of females equal to that of the males, would produce at the third generation a pofterity of two thousand million of millions? Let a perfon form to himfelf, if he can, an idea of the prodigious number of flies which at the end of a few years a fingle fly of this kind would produce, had not Providence taken care to limit the progrefs of fuch aftonishing fecundity. But what fhall we fay when we confider, that God created in the firft of these animals, a faculty fufficient for the production of many thousand generations of their kind, which ihould continue to fucceed each other to the end of the world, and of which each individual female feems to poffefs the power of multiplication in fo enormous a degree? Certainly thofe who think that all reproduction is performed by developement, will here find themselves perplexed, and will be

obliged to acknowledge that if their fyftem is plaufible on one' hand, on the other it is founded on fuppofitions which we cannot conceive to be poffible, fince for this purpose, we muft be able to comprehend how the original parent fly we are fpeaking of, contained, in its body, fuch a prodigious number of young, that when arrived at their full growth, and united together, they would form, if I may venture to fay fo, a mafs greater than would be produced by the accumulated matter of all the globes in the visible hemifphere. But this is not the only marvellous circumftance. As each young one when inclofed in the parent fly, is at least thirty thoufand times fmaller than its mother, and as we muft fuppofe that each young one contains germs at least thirty thousand times fmaller than it is itself, and fo of the rest; here is a new fort of progreffion, ftill more marvellous, than the firft, by which each fly, in proportion as we confider it a step nearer to its first parent, will diminifh much more in size than it is encreafed in number, at each generation: fo that the maggot of fuch a fly which is at present thirty thousand times fmaller than its mother, was three hundred million of times fmaller à generation before; and three thoufand million of millions of times fmaller two generations before. Let any one judge after this of the infinite minutenefs of fuch a maggot, according to this fyftem, fome thoufands of generations back. It would need, in fuppofing that flies generate only once a year, at least, twenty-two thoufand figures ranged confecutively, to exprefs arthimetically, how many times fmaller than a fly of its fpecies it was, when inclofed in the common mother of the fpecies. If in this fyftem of developement we fhould fuppofe that it is in the animalcule of the male femen, that the fource of multiplication is to be fought, the wonder would greatly encrease: for these animalculæ are much lefs in proportion to the males, than the fo tufes of flies are to the female.

PAGE 51, 1. 6.

I have made no mention of maggots, caterpillars, &c. The reafon of this is plain. All the winged infects here enumerated, having been formerly maggots, caterpillars or other creeping larvæ, could not be reckoned as maggots, caterpillars, &c. and then as winged infects without counting them twice.

NOTE

PAGE 52, 1. 7.

Ford for other animals. It is not only among other animals that infects meet with enemies; they destroy one another. The Formica-leo (Myrmeleon formicarium) devours ants, the Hemerobius perla and a great number of larvæ feed on all forts of aphides; fpiders eat flies, and are themselves kilded by wafps, and other voracious flies. The tree bugs, various larvæ which change into beetles, and many beetles and flies devour caterpillars, pfeudo-caterpillars, maggots, butterflies, and moths; fome fpeeies of caterpillars eat one another. The ichneumon flies of many species destroy an infinity of larve by laying their eggs in them which produce young, that prey on the vitals of the animal which harbours them. The carnage is ftill greater among aquatic infects; of these there is hardly a fpecies which is not, at fome period of its life, a prey to fome bolder or ftronger infect.

PAGE 20, 1.9.

* Locusts which lay waste the fields, have the tail too fhort to be able to lay their eggs deep in the earth: accordingly, birds and the injuries of the elements deftroy them in great numbers; a wife ordination of Providence, to prevent the exceflive multiplication of fo noxious an animal!

PAGE 46, 1. 6.

Every thing which lives refpires. Although this is a moft general rule, it is not perhaps without exception in infects. Many have given me reafon to doubt of their refpiration, at least in certain stages of their existence. I took for instance fome of thofe large cantharides of the willow, whofe ftrong fmell, though not very difagreeable, is felt at a confiderable distance. I put them under a glafs, where for a long time fulphur had been burning on a piece of copper made red hot, that the fulphur might continue to burn in the midft of its own vapours; and although there arose so thick a finoke that it almoft hid my infects from fight, they supported thefe vapours for more than half an hour without fuffering, that I could perceive, the smallest injury.

Befides, when we confider the folidity of the greatest part of the cones made by the pfeudo-caterpillars, and the great number

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