ORDER III. STRAIGHT-WINGED INSECTS. Ill 



and, in fact, was never ascertained until the year 1835, 

 when Signer Bassi proved it to be a minute fungus, called 

 J3otiytis bassiana, in a state of vegetation, which had by de- 

 grees occupied the whole interior of the body, and then 

 burst through the skin. 



The same kind of parasitic growths may occur on the 

 human body, or on any animal or vegetable body, and it is 

 probably the ignorance of these facts that has occasioned so 

 many marvelous and absurd stories by travelers. Simple 

 matters in science may thus become wonderful bugbears 

 to the uneducated. I suppose some would hardly believe 

 that in the tropics a mahogany-tree will gradually change 

 into a gamboge-tree ; but this is a fact which I have wit- 

 nessed, and it can be explained very easily. It is really no 

 more remarkable than our ordinary process of grafting. 

 The seeds of the Clusia alba et rosca, a species of gamboge- 

 tree, when fully matured, burst their pods, and, inclosed in 

 a gummy substance, they drop from the tree, like so many 

 caterpillars letting themselves down by a fine filament to 

 the ground. If one of these trees stands near a mahogany- 

 tree, the seeds are blown by the wind, as they swing in the 

 air, against the trunk of the latter tree, and, being covered 

 with the viscid gamboge, they adhere to its bark, take root 

 in it, and in the course of a few years they change its whole 

 character. The trunk and branches of the mahogany-tree 

 gradually decay and drop off, and in its stead grows the 

 gamboge-tree^ trunk, branches, and all. 



Crickets (Acheta). 



The CRICKET has already been immortalized in the En- 

 glish poetry of Cowper, and although its race may become 

 extinct, as long as the languages endure it still must be 

 familiar to all. Its pleasant song, from June to October, 

 during the whole season of tropical illusions, has excited 

 much admiration in the lovers of nature for many ages ; 



