DISEASES OF INSECTS. 215 



in a state of torpidity, in which they remain chiefly with- 

 out motion, it will not seem wonderful, should any par- 

 tial moisture accidentally accumulate upon them, that it 

 affords a seed plot for certain minute fungi to come up 

 and grow in. Persoon observes with regard to his genus 

 Isaria, that one species grows upon the larva; of insects 

 (7. truncata), and another upon pupa: (I. crassa*}: 

 as he does not say upon dead larvae and pupae, as upon 

 a former occasion b , perhaps in these cases these plants 

 may constitute an insect disease ; but I lay no stress 

 upon it, and only mention the circumstance here as con- 

 nected with the history of these animals. Mr. Dickson 

 has described a Sphazria under the name of entomorhiza 

 that grows upon dead larvae ; it has a slender long stipes 

 and spherical granulated head : on the pupa of a spe- 

 cies of Cicada in my cabinet, another kind of Splweria, 

 with a twisted thickish stipes and oblong head, springs 

 up in the space between the eyes. I observed something 

 similar but longer, in the grub of some large beetle in 

 M. Du Fresne's museum at Paris ; and I have a memo- 

 randum of having noticed something of the kind on the 

 rostrum of a Calandra. Bees and humble-bees have 

 been sometimes thought to have some species of mucor or 

 other Fungilli occasionally growing upon them; but 

 Mr. Brown is of opinion that stamina which they have 

 filched from flowers have been mistaken for these Fun- 

 gillie since he has detected those of Orchidea: in some 

 of this tribe, and upon a beetle shown to him by Mr. 

 MacLeay, one which he knew to be the stamen of an 

 Aristolochia. I once observed a bunch of what I mis- 

 took for a singular mucor that adorned the vertex of a 

 humble-bee, between the antennae, which doubtless were 

 *$ynops. Mclh. Fung, 687- g. 63. n. 1, 2. b Ibid. 4. g. 1. rT. 4. 



