5 INSECT MISCELLANIES. 



glass, even when the body hangs downwards, * and 

 it is also finely adapted, both as a brush and as a 

 comb, for cleaning the body and wings;! but it is 

 no less fitted tor being an organ of touch, from its 

 softness and flexibility. Amongst the locusts (Lo- 

 custidce), however, this structure is more conspicuous 

 from the greater size of the insects, the terminal por- 

 tion of the foot being not only furnished with a move- 

 able claw, but with two soft round palms, if we may 

 call them so, which must greatly assist in feeling the 

 nature of the surface over which the insect walks. 

 Even in insects of smaller size, as the musk beetle 

 {Cerambyx odoraius, De Geer), and the catch-weed 



a Musk beetle (Cerambyx odoratus) 

 h Catch-weed beetle (I'miarcha tenehrkosa). 

 ♦ 

 * See Insect Transformations, p. 390-1. It is right lo men- 

 tion that a paper has been recently read at the Linneean Socie- 

 ty, in which the principle of suction, by wtiich the fly is said 

 to hold on against gravity, is disproved. See Taylor's Philo- 

 sophical Magazine, 

 t J, Rennie, in Journal of Royal Institution, for Oct. 1830. 



