238 DISEASES OF INSECTS. 
being struck with the circumstance, caught the animal, 
upon which its hind legs were immediately detached 
from it. His surprise was greatly increased when he 
saw issue from its body a cylindrical worm about two 
feet and a half in length. Upon being called, Dr. M. 
soon recognised it for a Gordius or Filaria ; and on his 
putting it into water, it moved in it with great velocity, 
twisting its long and slender body in all directions. 
Upon opening the body of the grasshopper, nothing ap- 
peared within it but the intestine shrunk up to a thread. 
A few days after, another was brought, which appeared 
in full vigour, but its abdomen was enormously distended, 
and from it another worm was extracted, which remained 
without motion rolled in a spiral direction : intending to 
preserve this in spirits of wine — as it had become flat he 
first immersed it in water, that it might recover if possi- 
ble its cylindrical form. Upon immersion a movement 
took place in the animal, and it gradually recovered its 
plumpness ; but it still remained without motion, as if 
dead, for nearly five days, when another living specimen 
being brought and placed with it, as soon as water was 
poured on them, the seemingly dead one began to show 
by a slight oscillation in its extremities that life was not 
extinct in it. Fresh water being poured upon it, at the 
end of the day it had recovered all its strength and 
agility. He afterwards often repeated the same experi- 
ment with a similar result a . From this account it ap- 
pears that the Gordius or Filaria has a property re- 
sembling that of the Vibrio Tritici, so well described 
and so beautifully figured by M. Bauer b , of apparently 
dying and being resuscitated by immersion in -water. 
a Matthey ubi supr. b Philos. Trans. 182H. 8. t. i. ii. 
