358 EDWAKD BURGESS. 



study of the best construction of sailing vessels, but his work was of 

 the highest excellence in certain directions, commanding the respectful 

 attention of men of the first rank in all parts of the world. 



Samuel H. Scudder, the eminent entomologist, speaks in his obitu- 

 ary notice of Burgess with such authority that we have done little 

 besides follow him in this brief article. 



Soon after his connection with the Society of Natural History began, 

 he commenced to work in collaboration with Mr. Scudder upon the 

 abdominal appendages of New England butterflies, the results of 

 which were published in Scudder's celebrated volumes on those ani- 

 mals. This was followed by a joint work published by these two au- 

 thors upon the similar organs of the different species in the Thanaos. 

 He subsequently published a series of anatomical papers beginning 

 with an investigation of the structure of the head and of the mouih 

 parts in the Psocidse. The most important and valuable was that 

 upon the anatomy of the Milkweed Butterfly. Mr. Scudder says of 

 this : " In the text and plates accompanying the larger memoir he gave 

 a more precise and detailed account of both the external and internal 

 anatomy of the insect discussed than had ever been given before of the 

 anatomy of any perfect butterfly, and brought to light a number of 

 interesting points that had been nearly or quite overlooked before, 

 such as the nature of the stria? on the scales, the musculature of the 

 tongue and its intimate structure, the cuticular processes of the food 

 reservoir, the backward course and chambered enlargement of the 

 aorta within the thorax, and the false claspers of the male abdomen, a 

 remarkable series of new observations to have been made ujxm a single 

 insect." 



His discovery of the strange course of the aorta in this butterfly led 

 him to pursue the subject further by the dissection of a number of 

 lepidopterous insects, and to embody its results in a brief illustrated 

 paper in the Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History 

 in the following year, by which he showed " that, if we except the 

 peculiar course of the anterior branch (of the aorta) in the hawk-moth, 

 we have (in the Lepidoptera) a gradual series from the butterflies 

 downward. In the former a distinct horizontal aortal chamber is pres- 

 ent ; in the higher moths a vertical node replaces the chamber, and this 

 vanishes in the lower moths." 



His discovery of the curious locked up mouth of the larva of 

 Dysticus in an animal previously supposed to have been mouthless 

 followed this in the same year, and his anatomy of the grasshopper, 

 Anabrus, and of the moth, Aletia, followed each other in succes- 



