fr.-t -r -m '13'wv t J jjjjAi fj^ 



J 20 THE INSECT WORLD. 



eye and under his hand, with more certitude and security than was 

 the mythological Danae, shut up, by order of Acrisius, in a tower of 

 bronze. 



" I took care," says Charles Bonnet, " to keep a correct journal of 

 the life of my insect. I noted down its least movements ; nothing it 

 did seemed to me indifferent. Not only did I observe it every day 

 from hour to hour, beginning generally at four or five o'clock in the 

 morning, and only leaving off at about nine or ten at night ; but I 

 even looked many times in the same hour, and always with the 

 magnifying glass, to render my observation more exact, and to learn 

 the most secret actions of my little lonely one. But if this continual 

 application cost me some trouble, and bored me not a little, in 

 amends I had some cause for self-applause and for having subjected 



myself to all this trouble My plant-louse changed its skin 



four times : on the 23rd, in the evening ; on the 26th, at two in 

 the afternoon ; on the 29th, at seven o'clock in the morning ; 



and on the 31st, at about seven o'clock in the evening 



Happily delivered from these four illnesses through which it was 

 obliged to pass, it at last reached that point to which, by my care, 

 I had been trying to bring it. It had become a perfect plant-louse. 

 On the I St of June, at about seven o'clock in the evening, I saw, 

 with great satisfaction, that it had given birth to another ; from 

 that time I thought I ought to look upon it as a female. From 

 that day up to the 20th inclusive, she produced ninety-five little 

 ones, all alive and doing well, the greatest number of which were 

 born under my own eyes !" * 



He very soon made some other experiments on the aphis of the 

 elder-tree, so as to assure himself if the generations of plant-lice,' 

 reared successively in solitude, preserved the same property of pro- 

 creating without copulation. 



"On the 1 2th of July," says he, "about three o'clock in the 

 afternoon, I shut up a plant-louse that had just been born under my 

 eyes. On the 20th of the same month, at six o'clock in the morning, 

 it had already produced three little ones. But I waited till the 22nd 

 towards noon before I shut up a plant-louse of the second generation, 

 because I could not manage earlier to be present at the birth of one 

 of those produced by the mother I had condemned to live in solitude 

 I always continued to observe the same precaution. I shut up onl) 

 those plant-lice which were born under my very eyes. A thirc 



* "Traite d'Insectologie, ou Observations sur les Pucerons," pp. 28 — 384I 

 irepartie, i8mo. Paris, 1745. 



