58 HABITS A>TD INSTINCTS OF ANIMALS. CHAP. II. 



one fly alone there have been reckoned no less than 

 16,000 eyes ; in a Scarabceus, 636'2 ; and in a butter- 

 fly, 34,650 ! These are, of course, no other than 

 the interstices of those crossed or scored 

 divisions which any one will perceive upon 

 looking at a common house fly, through an 

 ordinary magnifier (fig. 12.). Each of these, 

 it has been shown, performs the office of a 

 single eye, although they are collected into 

 two packets, corresponding in outward ap- 

 pearance to the ordinary pair of eyes of vertebrated 

 animals. Spiders, however, have theirs differently con- 

 structed. In ordinary instances, they consist of eight, 

 placed at various and unequal distances on the crown of 

 the head, or thorax j but some species from Cuba have 

 only two; and all are destitute of the reticulations 

 above mentioned. 



(76.) The vital principle in some insects appears to 

 be equally strong with that exhibited by the zoophytes, 

 and many of the tortoises. La Vaillant informs us, 

 that, while residing at the Cape, he took a large red- 

 winged locust, " opened its belly, and pulling out its 

 intestines, filled up the cavity with cotton, and in that 

 state fixed it to the bottom of a box with a pin, which 

 passed through its thorax. It remained there five 

 months ; and at the end of this period, our unfeeling 

 traveller asserts, that it still moved its legs and an- 

 tenna."* We cannot approve, indeed, in a general way, 

 of such cruel experiments upon living creatures ; yet we 

 feel not sorry that, in this instance, it has been made, 

 since, with other facts we shall here notice, it will 

 show that practical entomology is not attended with 

 that suffering to the insects captured, which has been 

 charged upon its pursuit. Those well-known lines of 

 Shakspeare, 



The poor beetle that we tread upon, 



In corporal suffering, feels a pang as great 

 As when a giant dies, 



* Travels in Africa, vol. iv. Introduction. 



