MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 231 



The late ingenious, learned, and lamented Dr. Reeve 

 of Norwich once related to nie that he found in a hot 

 fountain on the top of a mountain, near Leuk in the 

 Valais in Switzerland, in which the thermometer stood 

 at 205°, transparent larvae, probably of gnats, or some 

 such insect. — Lord Bute alsjo, in a letter to my late re- 

 vered friend, the Rev. William Jones of Nayland, im- 

 _ parts a similar observation made by His L/ordsbip at the 

 baths of Abano, near the Euganian mountains, on the 

 "borders of the Paduan states; They are strong, sul- 

 phureous, boiling springs, oozing out of a rocky emi- 

 nence in great numbers, and spreading over an acre of 

 the top of a gentle hill. In the midst of these boiling 

 springs, within three feet of live or six of them, rises a 

 tepid one about blood warm. But the most extraor- 

 dinary circumstance that he relates is, that not only 

 confervas were found in the boiling springs, but num- 

 bers of small black beetles, that died upon being taken 

 out and plunged into cold water ^. — And once, having 

 taken in the hot dung of my cucumber-bed a small 

 beetle {Ljjciits Juglandis, F.), I immersed it in boil-, 

 ing water; aiul after keeping it submerged a suffi- 

 cient time, as I thouglit, to destroy it, upon taking it 

 out "and laying it to dry, it soon began to move and 

 walk. Its native station being of so higli a tempe- 

 rature, Providence has fitted it for it, by giving it 

 extraordinary powers of sustaining heat. Other in- 

 sects are as remarkable for bearing any degree of 

 cold. Some gnats that De Geer observed, survived 

 after the water in which they were was frozen into a 



* J. Mason Good's Anniversary Oration, delivered March S, 1 808, before 

 the Medical Socitty of London, p. 31. 



