OF HARTING. 351 



been indebted to these " Entomological Fiddlers " 

 (Kirby and Spence) for his first idea of that instru- 

 ment, the notes of which are not only produced, but 

 intensified also on exactly the same principle as their 

 music ? 



Hitherto we have said nothing of the internal 

 anatomy of insects of this order, but we may here 

 note the fact that every individual cockroach, cricket, 

 grasshopper and locust, possesses a gizzard of a much 

 more complicated character than that of a bird. In 

 the latter, various hard substances, from large frag- 

 ments of metal or stone to pebbles and grains of sand, 

 according to the size of the animal, are made to 

 perform the functions of teeth on the food within the 

 gizzard ; but this wonderful apparatus in the insects 

 under notice, is furnished with rows of permanent 

 teeth, and it is highly interesting to find that the 

 gizzard of the cockroach, laid open and mounted in 

 Canada balsam as an object for the microscope, 

 closely resembles a preparation for the same purpose 

 of the lingual ribbon of a mollusc. We are not un- 

 prepared to meet with this resemblance between the 

 two organs, when we know that their functions are the 

 same namely, the comminution of the food, in the 

 one case before, and in the other after deglutition. 

 Incidentally we may add that many other insects 

 possess gizzards, which as may be anticipated, differ 

 materially from each other in the character of their 

 internal armature, some are provided with teeth, some 

 with plates, some with horns, and others with bristles ; 

 but in every instance the apparatus is a very wonder- 

 ful one. In a pretty little beetle, not uncommon in 

 the parish, and with a name perhaps as long as any 

 to be found in the parish register, the gizzard is about 

 the size of an ordinary pin's head, and is lined with no 

 less than four hundred teeth ! If we are curious to 

 enquire as to the number of muscles engaged in the 

 effective working of this wonderful machinery, we are 



