DISEASES OF INSECTS. 215 
in a state of torpidity, in which they remain chiefly with- 
out motion, it will not seem wonderful, should any par- 
tial moisture accidentally accumulate upon them, that it 
affords a seed plot for certain minute fungi to come up 
and grow in. Persoon observes with regard to his genus 
Isaria, that one species grows upon the larva; of insects 
(7. truncata), and another upon pupce (I. crassa*)'. — 
as he does not say upon dead larvae and pupa?, as upon 
a former occasion b , perhaps in these cases these plants 
may constitute an insect disease ; but I lay no stress 
upon it, and only mention the circumstance here as con- 
nected with the history of these animals. Mr. Dickson 
has described a Sphceria under the name of entomorhiza 
that grows upon dead larva? ; it has a slender long stipes 
and spherical granulated head : on the pupa of a spe- 
cies of Cicada in my cabinet, another kind of Sphceria, 
with a twisted thickish stipes and oblong head, springs 
up in the space between the eyes. I observed something 
similar but longer, in the grub of some large beetle in 
M. Da Fresne's museum at Paris ; and I have a memo- 
randum of having noticed something of the kind on the 
rostrum of a Calandra. Bees and humble-bees have 
been sometimes thought to have some species of macorox 
other Fungilli occasionally growing upon them; but 
Mr. Brown is of opinion that stamina which they have 
filched from flowers have been mistaken for these Fun- 
gilli, since he has detected those of Orchidece in some 
of this tribe, and upon a beetle shown to him by Mr. 
MacLeay, one which he knew to be the stamen of an 
Aristolochia. I once observed a bunch of what I mis- 
took for a singular mucor that adorned the vertex of a 
humble-bee, between the antenna?, which doubtless were 
»Synops. Meth. Fung. 6S7-g. 63. n. 1, 2. b Ibid. 4. g. 1. n. 4. 
