LONDON INSECTS 87 



level at least of an ordinary man's nose, have been long 

 surrendered to Earwigs and Woodlice. The French 

 naturalist, Lyonet, who dissected a Goat Moth cater- 

 pillar, counted as many as 4061 distinct muscles, of 

 which 228 were in the head. One could have formed 

 a pretty fair idea without any such detailed informa- 

 tion, of the muscular power necessary in the fore- 

 quarters to enable a Grub to work his way through 

 solid timber as easily as if it were so much cheese ; and 

 the figures are chiefly interesting, as an instance of the 

 laborious minuteness of the work of many entomo- 

 logists. ' In the human subject,' add Messrs. Kirby 

 and Spence, from whom the figures are taken at second 

 hand, 'only 529 have been counted, so that this 

 minute animal has 3532 muscles more than the " lord 

 of creation." ' The smell of a Goat Moth is an instance 

 of the power of association to sweeten the disagreeables 

 of life. Judged on its own merits it is very nasty 

 indeed, but it may be charged with recollections 

 making a whiff as welcome as the scent of mignonette, 

 which now meets us pleasantly at every turn in the 

 park. Such amiable day-dreams are, though, if too 

 freely indulged in, liable to a rude awakening. It is 

 not an unheard-of thing for ladies who have been 

 carried back for a long summer afternoon to scenes 

 of childhood, to find, on packing up their sketches, that 

 the source of the foetid smell hi the oak wood, in which 

 the charm had lain, was not, as they had fondly 

 believed it, a wood-witch fungus, but a dead rabbit un- 

 noticed in the fern beside them. 



