ORDER III.-—STRAIGHT-WINGED INSECTS. 111 
and, in fact, was never ascertained until the year 1835, 
when Signor Bassi proved it to be a minute fungus, called 
Botrytis bassiana, in a state of vegetation, which had by de- 
grees occupied the whole interior of the body, and then 
burst through the skin. 
The same kind of parasitic growths may occur on the 
human body, or on any animal or vegetable body, and it is 
probably the ignorance of these facts that has occasioned so 
many marvelous and absurd stories by travelers. Simple 
matters in science may thus become wonderful bugbears 
to the uneducated. I suppose some would hardly believe 
that in the tropics a mahogany-tree will gradually change 
into a gamboge-tree; but this is a fact which I have wit- 
nessed, and it can be explained very easily. It is really no 
more remarkable than our ordinary process of grafting. 
The seeds of the Clusia alba et rosea, a species of gamboge- 
tree, when fully matured, burst their pods, and, inclosed in 
a gummy substance, they drop from the tree, like so many 
caterpillars letting themselves down by a fine filament to 
the ground. If one of these trees stands near a mahogany- 
tree, the seeds are blown by the wind, as they swing in the 
air, against the trunk of the latter tree, and, being covered 
with the viscid gamboge, they adhere to its bark, take root 
in it, and in the course of a few years they change its whole 
character. The trunk and branches of the mahogany-tree 
eradually decay and drop off, and in «its stead grows the 
gamboge-tree, trunk, branches, and all. 
Crickets (Acheta). 
The Cricket has already been immortalized in the En- 
glish poetry of Cowper, and although its race may become 
extinct, as long as the languages endure it still must be 
familiar to all. Its pleasant song, from June to October, 
during the whole season of tropical illusions, has excited 
much admiration in the lovers of nature for many ages; 
