SUCKING INSECTS, 203 



the charge, and even contrives to make a comfortable 

 rneal through our silk or cotton stockings, by means 

 of its horny, sharp-pointed weapon*." But this little 

 phlebotomist is a solitary, not a social insect, like the 

 house-fly, and seldom visits our apartments except 

 when driven thither by bad weather f. 



We have more than once alluded to the extraordi- 

 nary change which takes place in the stomach and 

 intestines of insects, when they pass from the 

 infant to the perfect state ; and have now to 

 remark, that a similar change takes place in the 

 organs of the mouth. In caterpillars, for example, 

 the mouth is furnished with strong cutting man- 

 dibles, for feeding upon hard substances ; while the 

 moth or the butterfly, into which these are trans- 

 formed, has only a tubular sucker, for absorbing 

 the honey of flowers. But this change in the feeding 

 organs, though so strikingly obvious, M. Savigny is 

 not disposed to admit, proceeding upon the principle 

 recently adopted in the French school, from hints 

 found in Aristotle, Willis, and De Geer, which finds 

 analogies and similarities in the members of animals 

 the most remote from each other in structure and 

 functions. The shell of the lobster, for example, 

 is thus fancied to correspond to the bones of qua- 

 drupeds, not only in general, but in all its various 

 pieces J ; and the breast-fins of the whale are imagined 

 to be analogies of the hands in man ; the change being 

 traced in successive gradations, from the ape, through 

 the otter, seal, walrus, manati, and dugong, to the 

 whale . It may be well to hear what Savigny 

 himself says on the subject immediately before us. 



* Intr.i.49 112. t J- R- 



J Aristotle, Hist. Anim. iv. ? * Willis, De Anima Brutorum, 



p. 11 ; De Geer, Mem. ii, 2 ; Geoff. St. Hilaire, Mem. de 1'In- 



stitute Franc. 



Harwood, Brande's Journ. 



