36 The Microscope. 



Lairs point nicely downward; while the little wing 

 occupies less space than the wing-case which is to 

 cover it. 



The hairs on this wing require minute examina- 

 tion. With even so high a power as 100 diameters, 

 we fail to make them out ; but a power of 200 shows 

 them to be each fringed again like a feather, and 

 the same power shows that at the base of each of 

 the little wing-cases, which measure at their broadest 

 part only one sixty-second of an inch, there is a 

 delicate little comb formed with beautiful regularity, 

 and having (as I ascertained with the highest power 

 of my microscope*) one hundred and twenty teeth ! 

 I imagine its use may be to remove all particles of 

 dust from the long feathery wings before the wing- 

 cases close over them. The thinly-scattered strong 

 bristles on the wing-case contrast with the regular 

 appearance of the tiny comb. 



* 900 diameters. It may interest the reader to hear that Mr. 

 Spence, the late celebrated entomologist, in acknowledging an 

 account which I sent to him of some of the above objects, wrote, 

 " I was especially pleased with the figure and description of the 

 comb-like appendage to the elytra [wing-cases] of the minute beetle, 

 so admirably figured, of the existence of which appendage I was not 

 at all aware, never having examined this species with a powerful 

 lens." 



