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On Vegetable Substances growing cni the bodies of living Ani- 

 mals. 



XN a letter from Dr Samuel S. Mitchill of New York to Pro- 

 fessor A. P. De Candolle of Geneva, in Silliman's Journal, 

 March 1827, there are some interesting observations stated with 

 regard to vegetable substances growing on the bodies of living 

 animals. 



His attention was called to these curious appearances in the 

 year 1808, when W. A. Burwell, Esq. brought him, from his 

 own plantation in Virginia, the larva of an insect, upon which a 

 vegetable had fixed itself, and grown to a considerable size. 

 Fjom its appearance, he was induced to consider it as belonging 

 to the species of Melolontha, ^whose grub is destructive at times 

 to the roots of grass, in meadows and pastures. The vegetable 

 was single, and, although somewhat injured, yet the lower part 

 of the stem and the point of attachment, were very distinct. 



Some years afterwards, another vegetating insect was present- 

 ed to him by Dr W. M. Ross, who obtained it in Jamaica, du- 

 ring his residence there. It was a full grown Sphynx, whose 

 whole body had been covered with a vegetable crop, issuing 

 thick from the thorax and abdomen. 



Another Sphynx, similarly covered with vegetables, was sub- 

 sequently shewn him by Dr J. B. Ricard Maddiana, who brought 

 it from Guadaloupe. 



This gentleman also gave him severdl vegetating wasps, pro- 

 cured by himself in the same place. On the 16th June 1823, 

 while on a botanizing excursion at Bay Mahaut in the above 

 island, he saw lying on the ground a wasp's nest, which had 

 fallen from a branch of Laurus persea. Some of the animals 

 were flitting about over the cells, and, by the softness of their 

 wings, and the faintness of their colours, were easily' known to 

 have been hatched but a short time. Many others were lying 

 dead on the ground. On examining these, he instantly percei- 

 ved vegetables proceeding from their bodies, and this uniformly 

 from the anterior part of the sternum or thorax. Some of the 

 cells still contained young wasps in the larva state, and which 

 had not reached the last stage of their metamorphosis. He 



