298 PTILOTA : INTERNAL ANATOMY. 



memoir published in the Entomological Magazine, intitled, 

 " On the want of Analogy between the Sensations of Insects 

 and our own."" When I was young in entomology," ob- 

 serves this kindly-hearted writer, " I wished anxiously to 

 find the quickest mode of killing an insect. Having captured 

 a pretty beetle (Malachius aneus), it struck me that by 

 cutting it in two at the junction of the thorax and abdomen, 

 the part which gives rise to the name insect (Insectum, 

 Errofiov), I should kill it in a moment. I took a pair of 

 scissors and divided it : the parts fell on a piece of white 

 paper which lay before me. Far from being dead in an in- 

 stant, I was grieved and surprised to see the head, with the 

 two fore-legs attached to it, begin to run about the paper. 

 It occasionally stumbled, but rose again, and exhibited, if I 

 may so speak, perfect self-possession. It made for the edge 

 of the paper ; but arriving there and looking over it, seemed 

 to think it too precipitous, and so coasted along in quest of 

 an easier descent, which, nevertheless, it did not seem able 

 to find. This coasting and searching for a convenient place 

 of descent, suited to its curtailed condition with respect to 

 legs, of which it appeared perfectly aware, occupied the head 

 incessantly. I regarded it with astonishment ' Here, then,' 

 I said to myself, as I watched its motions, ' here lies the 

 vitality of an insect : the body at any rate is dead.' But in 

 this I was quickly undeceived, for in about a minute after 

 the body had fallen upon the paper, I saw the hind-legs 

 brought upward, and employed in deliberately brushing and 

 cleaning the wing-cases, exactly as a house-fly may be seen 

 to clean its wings on a window pane. The legs were then 

 withdrawn, the cases raised up, the true wings expanded 

 from beneath, and all made ready for flight, which, indeed, 

 I expected to see ; but the body seeming then to become 

 aware that there was no guide, the head, its former com- 

 panion, being in possession of the eyes, the design was aban- 



