THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 279 



According to Swammerdam, the hairs on the tip of the breath- 

 ing tube and end of the body of a mosquito larva are anointed with 

 oil so as to repel water. He also remarks that this oil is removed 

 when the larva is roughly handled. Harvey, who discovered the 

 circulation of the blood, made the statement that "bees, wasps, 

 hornets, or butterflies, and whatever other animals are generated 

 by metamorphosis from a creeping insect, are offspring of chance, 

 and therefore never to keep up their species." 



Baster thought that the spiracles of insects were their organs 

 of smell, and this opinion was also held by Cuvier, Dumeril and 

 Lehmann, Cuvier believing that the lining of the trachea? were 

 constructed to receive stimuli. The old superstitions connected 

 with certain wood-boring beetles and their tappings, known as the 

 "death watch," prompted Swift to write the following lines: 



"A wood worm 

 That lies in old wood, like a hare in her form, 

 With teeth or with claws it will bite, it will scratch; 

 And chambermaids christen this worm a death watch ; 

 Because like a watch it always cries click. 

 Then woe be to those in the house that are sick, 

 F^or sure as a gun, they will give up the ghost. 

 If the maggot cries click w^hen it scratches the post. 

 But a kettle of scalding hot water injected. 

 Infallibly cures the timber affected; 

 The omen is broken, the danger is over. 

 The maggot will die and the sick will recover." 

 In 1730, during a severe outbreak of the Brown-tail Moth in 

 the vicinity of Paris, the French journalists stated that part of the 

 caterpillars were produced by spiders, and that these spiders, and 

 not the caterpillars, produced the webs from the slime of snails, 

 which they were said to have been seen collecting for that purpose. 

 A more garbled idea than this it would be hard to invent. The 

 outbreak was so severe at that time that the city olificials of Paris 

 issued an order compelling the people to "uncaterpillar" (dechenil- 

 ler) their trees. Cold rains, however, produced so much mortality 

 among the larvae that it was not necessary to enforce the order. 



And so on, through all of the pages of early entomology, run 

 these curious beliefs and fascinating old accounts of insects. 



