of Lost Parts in the Articulata. 147 



entirely absent; a fact which Mr. J. Obadiah Westwood after- 

 wards* quietly re-announced without due acknowledgement. 

 Mr. Waterhouse's testimony in support of my facts has also been 

 most strangely omitted by Mr. J. 0. Westwood^ the Secretary, in 

 his printed report of that meeting f, notwithstanding that Mr. 

 Waterhouse^s confirmation was duly entered in the Minute Book 

 of the Society. JMr. Westwood however still doubted that the 

 fact was common to the whole class of insects. 



Mr. Fortnum's observations on Phasma confirmatory of the 

 statement by Miiller, together with Heineke's on the antennse of 

 Blatta and Reduvius, and an observation then made by Mr* 

 Marshall, that he had once observed a specimen of the common 

 Blatta with one leg much smaller than the rest, were regarded by 

 Mr. J. 0. Westwood as showing only a power of reproduction in 

 those insects which do not undergo a complete metamorphosis ; 

 and on a subsequent occasion % he endeavoured to draw a distinc- 

 tion between these, and those which do undergo such change, 

 and announced his belief that the Lepidoptera are incapable of 

 reproducing lost parts. 



With a view to set this question at rest, as I had already set 

 at rest that respecting the Myriapoda, I made a series of experi- 

 ments in the following summer on the larvae of two of our com- 

 monest Lepidoptera, Vanessa urticce and V. Id, the nettle and 

 peacock butterflies. The results of these were perfectly confir- 

 matory of the general view, and established the fact, that a power 

 of reproduction of lost parts is common to the whole of the In- 

 secta. The observations on V. urtica were communicated to the 

 Royal Society on the 20th June 1844, and are printed in the 

 ' Transactions ' for that year. An account of these experiments 

 was also given a few months later, and the specimens exhibited 

 to the Entomological Society in October 1844, at which time 

 Mr. H. D. S. Goodsir also gave an account of his own experi- 

 ments on the Crustacea. 



Thus then these experiments have established the fact as a 

 law, that the whole of the Articulata have the power of repro- 

 ducing lost parts. Every new observation on the growth of 

 parts confirms this view. Very recently I have received, in a 

 collection of insects from Melbourn, Port Philip, a specimen of 

 Panesthia, one of the Blattidee, in which the metathoracic leg 

 on the left side has been reproduced. The entire limb is not 

 more than one-third of that of the corresponding one on the 

 opposite side, but, as in the insects experimented on, it pos- 

 sesses the whole of the essential parts of the organ — the coxa, 



* Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. vol. xvi. p. 277. + Loc. cit. 274. 



X Proceedings lint. See. March 1844 : Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. yoI. xvi, 

 p. 277. 



11* 



