84 THE CA.NADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



MUNCHAUSEN SUBSTANTIATED. 



On one occasion when ihat illustrious and veracious traveller, Baron 

 Munchausen, was pursuing the enemy into the gate of a fortified town, the 

 portcullis dropped and cut off the hinder part of his horse. Heated by the 

 conflict and the routing of the enemy, he rode to a tank to give the faithful 

 animal some water. The horse drank like the parched earth after a six- 

 months' drought, until the Baron finally looked around and saw the muti- 

 lation, and found that as fast as the horse drank, the water ran out of his 

 sliced-ofif body, and that his thirst would probably never be slaked. 



The universal verdict of the reading public for many years has placed 

 Munchausen high upon the long list of writers whose tales are more inter- 

 esting than true, and yet physiologists tell us that in the simple narrative 

 which I have just briefed the Baron was one of the first to voice a great 

 physiological fact. That is, that while thirst is felt in the mouth and 

 throat, it is in reality a general craving of the whole system, and that no 

 amount of water in the mouth alone will prevent an animal from dying of 

 thirst. 



Now, as Munchausen was ahead of his generation as a physiologist, 

 why should we not more patiently search in his works for other truths ? 

 Just as we have our investigators and expert interpreters of hidden mean- 

 ings in Shakespeare and Browning, and the Wagner music dramas, why 

 should not societies be formed for the investigation and interpretation of 

 Munchausen ? 



All this, however, is theoretical and suggestive, and introductory to 

 the statement that I know of a chain of facts which resemble Munchau- 

 sen's horse-decorpitation story, and briefly and without further plea, the 

 facts are these : 



There is a genial little caterpillar which disports itself among the 

 leaves of the Washington shade trees in the month of August, and which 

 is known to its select circle of acquaintances as the fall web-worm. There 

 is also an enterprising green bug of predatory instincts which is called the 

 soldier-bug, and which, afflicted with as strong and persistent a thirst as that 

 of a Kentucky colonel, seeks continually to assuage it by drinking the blood 

 of the fall web-worm. In this gory pursuit, however, the soldier-bug has 

 a strong rival in the wheel-bug, who, if the former is compared to the 

 Kentucky colonel, must be likened for thirst to the Georgia Judge — the 



