308 



a person has succeeded in obtaining the Acams horridus, Ttirpin, by 

 means of the voltaic power, in the manner it is supposed Mr. Crosse 

 obtained them ; and another, it is also stated, has not succeeded in 

 his experiment. I have not troubled you with any remarks upon the 

 absurdity of expecting vitality from chemical action, even when as- 

 sisted bj the electro-galvanic fluid, but I have sent you the following 

 observations (if you think them worthy of a place in ' The Entomo- 

 logist,'), stated by a lecturer. Dr. Warwick, about four years ago, when 

 delivering a course of lectures upon Chemistry &c. in this town, as 

 they tend very much to elucidate the confusion as to the source whence 

 the Acari take their migration (not creation). Dr. W. stated that he 

 received from Mr. Crosse, two perfect Acari and two germs, so called, 

 but it appeared from the statement that they were larva3 undergoing 

 their last ecdysis. On his return to Exeter, after receiving the above, 

 his son mentioned the circumstance to a zealous entomologist of that 

 city, whose name was mentioned but I have forgotten it. He desired 

 to see them, and immediately they were shown to him he said, in a 

 tone of the utmost surprize, — " Is this the mite that Mr. Crosse fan- 

 cies he is creating by the power of galvanism ! I know the Acarus 

 very well, and I believe I have some of them at home at the present 

 time. The fact most assuredly is, that Mr. Crosse has a nest of them 

 in his house unknown to himself; and some of them having strayed to 

 his apparatus, and remaining there subject to his inspection, have se- 

 duced him into the belief that he had created them." Dr. Warwick 

 also stated that after that time up to the time of delivering the above 

 lecture, he found them in the druggists' shops in every town he had 

 visited on his lecturing tour. He also further stated that in his cor- 

 respondence with Mr. Crosse he forwarded from Hereford to the lat- 

 ter gentleman a supply of the Acari that he had collected from some 

 of the druggists's shops in that city, as a convincing proof of the fal- 

 lacy of his supposed discovery. By the foregoing account the ap- 

 pearance or non-appearance of the Acari, as attendants of the galvanic 

 experiments when they are repeated by any person, is easily as well 

 as reasonably accounted for without proceeding to the wild far-fetched 

 speculations of spontaneous generation. — James Bladon ; Pontypool, 

 February 16, 1842. 



157. Madame Merian and the Fire-Jlies. Whilst upon the sub- 

 ject of controverted statements, how truly pleasing it is to observe the 

 defence of poor Sybilla Merian in Taylor's ' Annals and Magazine of 

 Natural History ' this month, by Mr. Shuckard ; and grateful ought 

 every entomologist to be to him for the task he has undertaken, to res- 



