8 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 f ; but it is 

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

 softness and flexibility. Amongst the locusts {Lo- 

 custidm), 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 

 (Ceramhyx odoratus^ De Geer), and the catch- weed 



a Musk beetle {Ceramhy.v odoratux'). 



b Catch-weed beetle (^Timarcha tenebricosa). 



* See Insect Transformations, p. 390-1. It is right to mention 

 that a paper has been recently read at the Linnaean Society, in 

 which the principle of suction, by which the fly is said to hold 

 on against gravity, is disproved. See Taylor's Philosophical 

 Magazine. 



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



