INTERNAL ANATOMY OF INSECTS. 197 



muscle, could suffer carriages to drive over him without 

 receiving any injury. Almost as remarkable is the state 

 of extreme relaxation into which the muscles of some 

 larva? fall, when their animation is suspended ; and the 

 revived tension to which a subsequent resumption of the 

 vital powers restores them. Bonnet having suspended 

 the animation of the caterpillar of Sphinx Ligustri by 

 keeping it submerged, squeezed it between his fingers, 

 until it had wholly lost its cylindrical form and was as 

 flat and supple as the empty finger of a glove ; yet in 

 less than an hour the very same caterpillar became as 

 firm, as compact, as cylindrical, and in short, as well, 

 as though it had never been submitted to treatment so 

 rough a . 



It is fortunate that animals of a large size, as has been 

 well remarked, especially noxious ones, have not been 

 endowed with a muscular power proportionable to that 

 of insects. A cockchafer, respect being had to their size, 

 would be six times stronger than a horse ; and if the ele- 

 phant, as Linne has observed, was strong in proportion 

 to the stag-beetle, it would be able to pull up rocks by 

 the root, and to level mountains b . Were the lion and 

 the tiger as strong and as swift for their magnitude as the 

 Cicindela and the Carabus, nothing could have escaped 

 them by precaution, or withstood them by strength. 

 Could the viper and the rattlesnake move with a rapidity 

 and force equivalent to that of the lulus and Scolopendra, 

 who could have avoided their venemous bite ? But the 

 CREATOR in these little creatures has manifested his Al- 

 mighty POWER, in showing what he could have done 

 had he so willed ; and his GOODNESS in not creating the 



a Bonnet (Euvr. ii. 124. b N. Diet. d'Hist. Nat. xxii. 81. 



