Imperial Institute of France. 75 
Buprestos, or burst-ox, because it suffocated such cattle as 
swallowed it with their grass; but, as usual, no description 
of the insect has been handed down to us. The moderns 
have made yarious applications of this name, and it would 
seem that the insect to which it really belongs has not 
been sufficiently ascertained. M. Latreille, after a scrupus 
lous co:parison of the passages in which its properties are 
mentioned with recent observations, has supposed it to-be 
the meloé proscaraleus of Linneus, or some proximate 
species. In fact, it is the meloé only, which adds to acrid 
and suspicious properties the habitude of living in grass 
and adhering to it so firmly as to be swallowed by cattle, 
Our associate M. de la Billardiere, who is occupied with 
the raising of bees, having observed one the abdomen of 
which «as larger than common, found a white worm in it, 
which he delivered to M. Bose for examination. The hody 
of this worm was white, divided into twelve rings, flattened 
underneath, terminated at one extremity by two large 
tubercles, each of them pierced with an oval hole, and at 
the other by two threads forming two soft points. Under 
the tubercles there was a transverse slit. M. Bose, considering 
this slit as the mouth, regards the part which is terminated 
by two points as that in which the anus ought to he ; and 
ranking this animal among the intestinal worms, he has 
formed a genus of it called dipedium. He admits however 
that the organs may be vice versd; and in this case the 
worm will considerably resemble several larve of flies with 
two wings. There is even reason to believe, according to 
the observations of M. Latreille, that the larve of one of 
these flies (the connops ferruginosum) exists in the inside 
of the drone bee. It is very remarkable that so large a 
worm should inhabit the body of an insect so small as the 
bee. 
The first stage of digestion, which takes place in the 
stomach, must have been at. an early period the object of 
the attention of physiologists, and recourse has been suc- 
cessively had to all the powers of nature to account for it. 
it was for along time ascribed to trituration by means 
of the muscular coats of the stomach. But Reaumur, 
having remarked that food contained in compressible tubes, 
open at both ends, digested the same as in the stomach, the 
general opinion of latter times has been, according to his 
experiments, that this function is owing to a kind of solu- 
tion operated by a juice which exudes from the coats of 
the stomach. 
Spallanzani asserts, in a very celebrated werk, that having 
. applied 
