EXPERIMENTS ON INSECTS. 311 



other insects, he tried all the preceding experiments 

 with very similar results. The heat communicated 

 to the glass egg was very considerable, amounting to 

 31° or 32' of Reaumur's thermometer,* or about 100° 

 Fahr. It was not surprising, therefore, that some of 

 the pupse perished : we think it more wonderful that 

 any of them survived. 



Reaumur suggests, from these experiments, that 

 those who are curious in obtaining the productions 

 of summer during winter, may add to the gaiety 

 of their forced flowers, by forcing a brood of butter- 

 flies into life to sport amongst them ; and he records 

 an instance in which a friend of his at Strasburgh in 

 this way hatched, by means of a stove, all the pupse 

 he could obtain. We have in several instances suc- 

 ceeded in obtaining butterflies in winter, by keeping 

 chrysalides under glasses on a mantelpiece in a room 

 with a constant fire ; but during the winter of 1829-30, 

 all which were thus kept died, probably from the fires 

 required by the unusual severity of the season being 

 too great for them. Several, on the other hand, 

 which we found on walls, and which had been ex- 

 posed to all the rigours of the winter, were disclosed 

 in due time in a perfect state. 



Having thus ascertained that heat produced the 

 eff^ects which he had anticipated, Reaumur next tried an 

 opposites series of experiments, by placing chrysalides 

 in diminished temperatures. He accordingly en- 

 closed in nurse-boxes a number of pupae formed in 

 August, 1733, and in the following January placed 

 them in a coal-cellar : their natural period of appear- 

 ing in the perfect state being July, 1 734. During the 

 hot months of this year he went from time to time to 

 see whether these pupse indicated an approaching 

 change, but they remained in their original state 

 during July and August, and continued so till the suc- 

 * Reaumur, Mem. vol. ii. p. 17. 



