83 



•which are comparatively rare, appear a large hawk-moth and several 

 caterpillars. Of Neiiropters there have been captured among others 

 an ant-hon, a lace fly, dragon flies, and white ants. In a piece of 

 amber lately in my possession there were no less than 27 white ants, 

 besides several detached wings, together with a moth and a small 

 beetle. Various kinds of Hemipters, or bugs, have been found ; also 

 divers Homopters (such as a Cicada and a Flata) ; while of Dipters 

 or flies the list is well nigh interminable. 



Other transparent resins, which embrace insects in their deadly 

 folds, are known in commerce as copal and gum-anime or elemi.''^ 

 Though largely employed in the arts, and exported in great quan- 

 tities from certain localities — Angola alone supplies about two 

 miUion pounds annually — little is known of their real origin, nor 

 indeed whether there may not be several kinds of resin erroneously 

 combined together, partly fossil, and partly recent, under the name 

 of copal and anime. That they are of vegetable origin (as in the 

 case of amber) there seeins to be no question, though the exact 

 species of tree which produces them is scarcely yet known. What- 

 ever it may be, it does not belong to the Pine tribe. In all pro- 

 bability the matter is a product of two Leguminous plants, Hymenea 

 and Trachylohium, species of which are indigenous to Southern India, 

 South America, and Africa, both west and east. With regard to the 

 latter region, Dr. Kirk, British Consul at Zanzibar, informs us, 

 through the Linnean Society, that ' ' Specimens removed from the 

 living tree show that large masses equalling the fossil in size are still 

 produced, and are as full of insects as were those of the ancient 

 forests." Indeed so large a number of organic remains does 

 " anime " contain, that its name of " animated " is fully justified. 

 But while the Trachylohium of East Africa still gives forth an amber 

 like resin from its stem, and the same resin exudes from the roots 

 of the American and Indian Hymenea, the learned traveller Dr. 

 Welwitch states as his decided opinion — (also in a paper read before 

 the Linnean Society) — that the copal of Western Africa is, like 

 amber, of a fossil nature ' ' produced by trees which in periods long 

 since past adorned the forests of that continent, but which at present 

 are either totally extinct, or exist only in a dwarfish posterity. The 

 copal is either dug out of the loose strata of sand, marl, or clay, or 

 else it is found in isolated pieces, washed out and brought to the 

 sm-face of the soil by heavy rain-falls, earth-falls, or gales." Burton 

 also, in a recent work on Zanzibar, speaks of gum copal as though it 

 were mainly, if not essentially, of a fossil nature. 



From these statements it would appear that the copals of com- 

 merce are of both fossil and recent origin. 



Having thus come down to our own days, we will notice first the 

 lowest forms of vegetable life, but perhaps the most mischievous, 

 the universally distributed "fungi;" as the onslaughts committed 

 by one of its members is often patent to the eye. I allude to the 

 fungus, called Empusina by one author, and Sporendonema by 

 another, to which the common housefly so frequently falls a victim. 

 One of these may often be seen during the autumn quite dead, but 

 with aU the semblance of life on the window pane ; apparently 

 glued down to the glass by its proboscis and outstretched legs ; if 



* Burton (Zanzibar). 



