PAGE 168, 1. 23.

* Some are found to ruminate. Such are the four fpecies of locufts mentioned in Leviticus, CH. XI, 21 and 22, "Yet these may ye eat of every flying creeping thing that goeth upon all four, which have legs above their feet to leap withal upon the earth. Even those of them you may eat; the locuft after his kind, and the bald-locuft after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grafshopper after his kind."

I am not fure that there are any infects which ruminate. This is a circumstance which Swammerdam fuppofes of the grafshoppers, and which Mr Leffer thinks he can prove from Scripture: but in my opinion, the paffage proves no fuch thing. The animals are there diftinguished into four claffes, viz. Quadrupeds, or as the Hebrew text expreffes it Beasts, (taking this word in a more extended fenfe than is generally given to it,) fifhes, birds and reptiles or infects. The fovereign legislator indicates, with regard to the two firft claffes, the characters by which the animals permitted by the law to be eaten were to be known. Those of the first were to be ruminating animals, to have the hoof divided, and the foot cloven. Thofe of the fecond clafs were to have fcales and fins. As to the third, the clean beafts are not diftinguished from the unclean by any character; but inftead of this, the law exprefsly mentions those birds which were not to be eaten. And as to the fourth clafs, the law contents itfelf with forbidding to eat," every flying thing that goeth upon all-four, having, befides its feet, legs to leap withal ;" and it excepts from this general rule only the four forts of locufts mentioned in the note above. This at leaft is the fenfe I would give to this laft paffage, which is also countenanced by the Hebrew text; for the version of those interpreters is hardly admiffible who translate it, fome thus, " Yet these may ye eat of every flying creeping thing that goeth upon all four, which have legs above their feet to leap withal ;" and others according to the obfervation of M. de Leffer himself, which goeth upon four feet, and which have not legs to leap withall,' But whatever interpretation may be given to the place cited, I do not know how it can follow that the four species of locufts, there allowed to be eaten, were among number of ruminating animals, or that the bare mention of their four feet, is fufficient to make them be confidered

6

the

as fubjected to the law eftablished before in the fame chapter, for animals of the first class, or to infer from the paffage that becaufe the law allowed the eating of these locufts. that therefore they muft ruminate, which feems to me to be the reafoning of our author.

PAGE 169, 1. 8.

Is formed of little veficles. If we are to understand here by lungs, a fpongy fub.tance filled with small veficles, and penetrated in every part by the different veffels which in the infpiration of the larger animals, receive the air by means of the trachea, I doubt much if any fuch lungs have hitherto been discovered in any infect, and the two veficles in bees which the author feems to confider as lungs on the authority of Swammerdam are by no means fuch. The bronchiæ, of which a great number are found difperfed over the whole body in moft infects, feem to ferve them inftead of lungs, and to fupply the want of that fpongy fubftance, which has never yet been detected in them.

PAGE 169, 1. 14.

In infects it is nothing but skin. We find, it is true, in the bodies of infects a number of veffels which feem to be compofed only of a fingle membrane; but these are not the pulmonary veffels; which as we have faid elsewhere are tubes, constantly open, furrounded with a thread clofely wound round them, like the flender wire round the bass ftring of a violin. That thread is easily disengaged from thefe trachea, by paffing lightly over them a moistened pencil. Thofe veffels make a very curious object in the microscope; we are ftruck with admiration at feeing those branches, which for the most part are incomparably more slender than a hair, and of which there are thoufands in the body of a fingle infect, fabricated with fo much art.

PAGE 169, 1. 29.

Thofe of others have five furrows. It is very general with thofe caterpillars which have a horn on the pofterior part, to void thofe channelled fœces; the furrows are likewife of ten croffed by interfections which divide thefe fœces as it were into different rings. The caufe of their regular and uncommon form certainly deferves investigation; it seems rather to depend on the mufcles of the anus, than on the internal figure of the rectum, which does not feem to be

veffel of fufficient firmness to give fuch a form to excrement fo hard as theirs.

PAGE 174, 1. 10.

An ant as big as a middle fized dog. We would have been very much obliged to M. de Bufbequiús if he had been fo kind as to fend fome of thofe monftrous ants to Europe. He would have then had the pleasure of delivering naturalifts from the repugnance they muft feel in believing fo extravagant a fact.

PAGE 174, 1. 15.

Without the affifiance of a microscope. This is not all. There are some which the moft excellent microscopes can hardly make visible, as we have already remarked.

PAGE 175, 1. 8.

Shine like burning coals.Befides the infects which shine in the night, fuch as the glow worm, &c. there is one found in Surinam which deferves to be known on account of its fingularity. According to the defcription which Mad. Merian gives of it, this animal, in its creeping state, seems to have a form approaching that of our imall grafshoppers, but is much larger; like them it has a long probofcis by which it fucks the juice from the flowers of the pomegranate, and this probofcis remains with it all its life. After having quitted one skin, it changes its form, and appears under that of a large green fly like our Cicada. Its flight is then very rapid, and the noife it makes with its wings is like the found of a cymbal. Although according to the ordinary course of nature, an infect, after having acquired wings, undergoes no farther change, yet this one, by the concurring teftimony of the Indians which Mad. Merian fays she had in part verified by her own experience, undergoes still a last transformation which renders it luminous, and which then procures it the name of the lantern fly. (Fulgora Laternaria Lin.) In this last transformation, befides other inconfiderderable changes which happen to its body and wings, there iffues, from the forepart of its head, a very long transparent bladder, coloured with reddifh and greenish ftreaks, and which diffuses a light fufficient to enable a perfon to read pretty small print. This animal, by the description the gives of it, is then about four inches long, and the bladder occupies about a fourth of its whole length. 3 F 2

Before

Mad.

Mad. Merian was acquainted with the luminous quality of this infect, the Indians brought her many of them which fhe fhut up in a large box. Being alarmed one night with a fingular noife which the heard in the house, she got up, lighted a candle, and went to fee what it was. The noife came from the box; the opened it, and immediately there iffued a flame, which encreased her emotion, and made her throw down the box, whence there was now dispersed a new beam of light, as each animal got out of it. We may believe her fear did not long continue, but foon gave place to admiration, and the immediately fet herself to regain animals fo extraordinary, which had taken advantage of the fear they had occafioned to make their efcape.

PAGE 176, 1. first.

By the clapping of the wings against one another. A great number of infects make a buzzing with their wings by agitating them without fuffering them to touch each other, or even to strike their body. Such are all the flies with two wings which make a noife in flying, and among others the gnats. In this cafe the found they excite is formed probably either in the fame way with the found made by a ftringed inftrument, merely by their vibrations; or it is made by reiterated strokes made on the small scales which fome flies have under their wings; or perhaps by the extremely rapid agitation of those two small moveable poifers which the wings of that fort of flies have near their origin. Thefe wings ftriking against the poifers when agitated may caufe this noife, by an effect fimilar to the found produced by a cord in vibration, when it meets with any body which touches it without refting on it. An eafy experiment may perhaps elucidate the matter; we have only to cut away thole fmall poifers and fcales from the large buzzing flies which have them: if, after that operation, they continue ftill to buzz when they fly, it will be a proof, that the noife proceeds from the mere agitation of the wings. But if, on the contrary, the buzzing ceafes, we may then with reafon infer, that the poifers and fcales concur in producing the noife. For there is little probability that it is formed by them alone; the vibrations of bodies, fo fhort and fo delicate, do not appear capable of producing tones fo grave; although it is not, however, impoffible; confidering,

that

that the velocity of their agitations does not depend on any thing, perhaps, but the mere will of the animal.

PAGE 176, 1. 28.

Difcharge a fenfible fmell. Many fpecies of ichneumons and wood-bugs, have a very difagreeable fmell. I have seen larvæ, not fo large by half as a bean, and which are of the number of those that change into beetles, which fend forth fo ftrong a smell of box-wood, that one could not remain in a room where there were only two or three of them. A kind of large cantharis in this country, smells fo strongly of honey, that in the open air, I have fometimes fmelt it, at the diftance of thirty paces.

PAGE 177, 1. 16.

This is a fort of web. We must not think, that, when we fee ftagnant waters, covered with a green and fibrous pellicle, that this pellicle is always a web, woven by infects. It is generally a fpecies of alga, which grows in ftill waters, and which is much relifhed by fome fmall larvæ; perhaps, from their being fo often found there, it has been thought, that they made it. At least, I have never found any fuch pellicle, which could be truly confidered as the fabrication of any animal.

PAGE 177, 1. laft.

The appearance proceeds from certain fpecies of butterflies.It is very common with flies, and with all forts of moths and butterflies, after having difengaged themfelves from their covering, while in the nymph or chryfalis state, and when their wings are unfolded and grown firm, at the moment when they are difpofing themselves to take their first flight, to discharge from the extremity of their abdomen, a quantity of fuperabundant humours, the fecretion of which had been made, while they were in the nymph or chryfalis ftate. These humours have no resemblance to the natural excrements of those infects; they are of different colours, and those which fall from butterflies are often red. Such, for inftance, are thofe of the fmall thorny caterpillars, which live in fociety on the nettle. These, and fome others, when they are to undergo their changes, leave the plant on which they have fed, and fufpend themfelves upon walls, when there are any at hand, and from this it has happened,

that