NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



H5 



" These curious plants are far from being uncoinmon. I have 

 examined at least a hundred. The natives eat them when fresh, 

 and likewise use them, when burnt, as colouring matter for their 

 tattooing, rubbing the powder into the wounds, in which state 

 it has a strong animal smell. When newly dug up the substance 

 of the caterpillar is soft, and when divided longitudinally, the 

 intestinal canal is distinctly seen. Most specimens possess the 

 legs entire, with the horny part of the head, the mandibles and 

 claws. The vegetating process invariably proceeds from the 

 nape of the neck, from which it may be inferred that the insect, 

 in crawling to the place where it inhumes itself prior to its me- 

 tamorphosis, whilst burrowing in the light vegetable soil, gets 

 some of the minute seeds of this fungus between the scales of 

 its neck, from which in its sickening state it is unable to free 

 itself, and which consequently, being nourished by the warmth 

 and moisture of the insect's body, then lying in a motionless 

 state, vegetate, and not only impede the process of change in the 

 chrysalis, but likewise occasion the death of the insect. That 

 the vegetating process thus commences during the lifetime of the 

 insect, appears certain from the fact of the caterpillar when con- 

 verted into a plant, always preserving its perfect form ; in no 

 one instance has decomposition appeared to have commenced, or 

 the skin to have contracted or expanded beyond its natural size. 

 A plant of a similar kind has been discovered growing in abund- 

 ance on the banks of the Murrumbidgee, New South Wales, in a 

 rich black alluvial soil. 



" It is a curious instance of a retrograde step in nature an 

 insect, instead of rising to the higher order of the butterfly, and 

 soaring to the skies, sinks into a plant, and remains attached to 

 the soil in which it has buried itself." The name of the insect is 

 Hipialus virescens ; the name of the parasitic fungus is Sphceria 

 Robertsii. 



LEPERS, p. 213. Having asked my friend Professor Erasmus 

 Wilson to give me a note as to the leper mentioned by White, 

 he has kindly presented me with two handsome volumes con- 

 taining his lectures on Dermatology, delivered in the Eoyal Col- 

 lege of Surgeons, England, 1871-5. 



In this work there is a very valuable chapter on Leprosy. He 

 says : " In the early days the word ' Lepra,' expressive of rough- 

 ness, was employed as a generic term to distinguish all cutaneous 

 diseases that were not otherwise characterised by ' smoothness,' 

 ' colour,' or ' magnitude ;' and the Arabian physicians adopted the 

 word lepra as the synonym of the disease named by the Greeks 

 ' elephantiasis ;' hence, at the present time Elephantiasis Grseco- 

 VOL. II. U 



