232 FOOTNOTES FROM 



ance is so little altered, that it is impossible without 

 actual examination to tell that they are dead. When 

 dying in the ordinary way, they always draw up their 

 legs, and cross them beneath their bodies ; but when 

 they perish of this disease, the legs are stretched out 

 supporting their bodies, and retaining them in their 

 natural position. The proboscis is protruded, as if in the 

 act of imbibing nourishment, and their whole appearance 

 is that of vigorous healthy flies that have alighted for a 

 moment, and may be expected in the next to take wing 

 and fly away. The only difference observed is a whitish 

 halo, like a sprinkling of flour, about three inches in 

 circumference, which surrounds them, and consists of the 

 minute dust-like spores shed by the fungus that has 

 attacked them. When more attentively examined, how- 

 ever, the abdomen is seen to be much swollen, the rings 

 composing it being separated from each other by inter- 

 spaces, occupied with white prominent zones of vegetable 

 growth. The body is a mere empty shell, reduced by 

 the slightest touch to a dry friable powder, and lined 

 with a thin, white, felt-like layer of mycelium, the entire 

 viscera and all the juices being consumed by the voracious 

 fungus. This disease has been long familiar to naturalists, 

 but owing to the imperfection of their microscopes, its 

 real nature was not ascertained until a comparatively 

 recent period. It was first accurately determined by 

 De Geer about the end of last century ; and a minute 

 and graphic description is given of it by Goethe, who 

 suffered nothing worthy of notice, however minute, or 

 apparently far removed from his own sphere, to escape 

 his observation. This, and all other vegetable parasites 



