THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 65 



trically opposed to the teaching of Kirby and Spence — 

 teaching which for half a century we have been taught to 

 believe infallible — that it would be uncandid, and certainly 

 uncourteous, to omit all mention of these fathers in Ento- 

 mology, supported as they are by other leaders in the 

 domain of science. In pursuance of this object, in the 

 justice of which every reader will concur, I cannot do better 

 than cite their own words. After enumerating the observa- 

 tions of Swamnierdam, Reaumur, Bonnet, De Geer, Baker, 

 and Chabrier, all of whom speak more or less decidedly of 

 blood-vessels, currents, moving fluids, pulsations, and circu- 

 lation, they proceed in this emphatic manner, crushing, as 

 it were, the observations of these worthies under the weight 

 of authority, — the authority of Lyonet, Cuvier, and Marcel 

 de Serres, — enforced as it is by their own views on this 

 important and highly interesting question, 



"But though these arguments, which I have staled in 

 their full force, appear strong, and at first sight conclusive, 

 those which may be urged for the more modern opinion — 

 that no circulation exists in insects, properly so-called — 

 appear to have still greater weight. Lyonet, whose piercing 

 eyes and skilful hand traced the course of so many hundred 

 nerves and bronchice, long after they became invisible to the 

 unassisted eye, and which were a thousand times smaller 

 than the principal blood-vessels opening into so large an 

 organ as the supposed heart of insects might be expected to 

 be, could never discover anything like them. His most 

 painful researches, and repeated attempts to inject them with 

 coloured liquids, were unable to detect the most minute 

 opening in the dorsal vessel, or the slightest trace of any 

 artery or vein proceeding from or communicating with it. 

 And Cuvier, whose unrivalled skill in Comparative Anatomy 

 peculiarly qualified him for the investigation, repeated these 

 enquiries, and tried all the known modes of injection, with 

 equal want of success; and is thus led to the conclusion that 

 insects have no circulation ; that their dorsal vessel is no 

 heart, and therefore ought not to be called by that namej 

 and that- it is rather a secretory vessel, like many others of 

 that kind in those animals." — ' Introduction to Entomology,^ 

 vol. iv. p. 91. 



Notwithstanding this very explicit statement of facts and 



