fufficient for animating a body compleat in its parts and functions for when we examine thefe two forts of animals, we fee evidently that each is a fingle infect, not a concatenation of infects united end to end, as fome people aver of the Solitaire; and thus I do not conceive what can be alledged against the conclufions which refult from the facts we have detailed. PAGE 168, 1. 12. Infects have an artery. This is the veffel which it is fupfuppofed forms the heart of infects; or if you will, it is a ftring of hearts running through the whole length of their back. In caterpillars the pulfations begin in it at the pofterior extremity, and go fucceffively from articulation to articulation towards the head. M. Reaumur on the subject of thefe pulfations mentions a very fingular fact. He fays that we may obferve in chryfalids newly transformed, and still tranfparent, that these pulfations change their direction, and that the great artery which, in the caterpillar, pufh the fluid from below towards the head, puth it in the chryfalis from the head towards the tail, a circumftance which fuppofes that in thefe two states the circulation of the fluid which ferves the purposes of blood proceeds in a quite contrary direction. I regret that I have hitherto neglected to repeat the experi ment on chrysalids newly transformed; for although I do not doubt that the fact is fo in the caterpillars which that illustrious author had examined, I have reason to believe that either that new motion does not continue for any long time, or that it is not common to all chryfalids. For having found a fpecies of caterpillar which furnished me with, what is very rare, a chryfalis exceedingly tranfparent, and through which I could fee distinctly all the movements of the artery, I took fome of them a few days after their trans formation, and fet myself to examine them at different times. with the greatest poffible attention, and that during the fpace of feveral months, that their transparency lafted; and I always obferved in them, with the greatest certainty, that the pulfations of their heart, or if you will, of their great artery, had in no degree changed their direction in the chryfalis; but that they continued during all that time to proceed from the tail towards the head, as they had formerly done in the caterpillar. PAGE 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 thofe 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 grasshopper after his kind." I am not sure that there are any infects which ruminate. This is a circumftance 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 Beafts, (taking this word in a more extended sense than is generally given to it,) fishes, 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. Thofe 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 beasts are not diftinguished from the unclean by any character; but instead of this, the law exprefsly mentions thole birds which were not to be eaten. And as to the fourth class, the law contents itfelf with forbidding to eat, every flying thing that goeth upon all-four, having, betides 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 alfo countenanced by the Hebrew text; for the verfion of thofe interpreters is hardly admiffible who translate it, fome thus, " Yet thefe 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 fpecies of locufts, there allowed to be eaten, were among the number of ruminating animals, or that the bare mention of their four feet, is fufficient to make them be confidered as fubjected to the law eft blifhed before in the fame chapter, for animals of the first class, or to infer from the paffage that because the law allowed the eating of these locusts that therefore they must ruminate, which feems to me to be the reasoning of our author. PAGE 169, 1. 8. I formed of little veficles. If we are to understand here by lungs, a ipongy fubitance filled with fmall veficles, and penetrated in every part by the different veffels which in the inspiration 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 most infects, feem to ferve them inftead of lungs, and to supply the want of that spongy substance, 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 single membrane; but thefe are not the pulmonary veffels; which as we have faid elsewhere are tubes, constantly open, furrounded with a thread closely wound round them, like the flender wire round the bafs ftring of a violin. That thread is eafily difengaged from thefe trache, by paffing lightly over them a moistened pencil. Thofe veffels make a very curious object in the microscope; we are struck with admiration at seeing those branches, which for the moft part are incomparably more slender than a hair, and of which there are thoufands in the body of a fingle infect, fabricated with so 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 those channelled fæces; the furrows are likewife of ten croffed by interfections which divide these fæces as it were into different rings. The caufe of their regular and uncommon form certainly deferves investigation; it feems rather to depend on the mufcles of the anus, than on the internal figure of the rectum, which does not seem to be a veffel of fufficient firmness to give such 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 Bafbequius if he had been No so. fo kind as to fend fome of those monitrous ants to Europe. He would have then had the pleafure of delivering naturalifts from the repugnance they matt feel in believing fo extravagant a fact. PAGE 174,1 15. Without the affiance of a microscope. This is not all. There are fome which the moft excellent microscopes can hardly make visible, as we have already remarked. PAGE 175, 1. 8. Shine like burning coals.Bendes 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 ftate, feems to have a form approaching that of our im.ll 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 ftill a laft transformation which renders it luminous, and which then procures it the name of the lantern fly. (Fulgora Laternaria Lin.) In this laft transformation, befides other inconfiderderable changes, which happen to its body and wings, there iffues, from the forepart of its head, a very long tranfparent bladder, coloured with redd.fh and greenish itreaks, and which diffufes a light fufficient to enable a person 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. Before 3 F2 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 fhe heard in the house, fhe got up, lighted a candle, and went to fee what it was. The noise came from the box; fhe opened it, and immediately there iffued a flanie, which encreafed 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 agi tating them without fuffering them to touch each other, or even to ftrike 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 ftrokes made on the fmall scales which fome flies have under their wings; or perhaps by the extremely rapid agitation of thofe two fmall 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 easy experiment may perhaps elucidate the matter; we have only to cut away thofe 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, impoflible; confidering,. that |