5 
THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 65 
trically opposed to the teaching of Kirby and Spence— 
teaching which for half a century we have been taught to 
believe infallible—that it would be uncandid, and certainly 
uncourteous, to omit all mention of these fathers in Ento- 
mology, supported as they are by other leaders in the 
domain of science. In pursuance of this object, in the 
justice of which every reader will concur, I cannot do better 
than cite their own words. After enumerating the observa- 
tions of Swammerdam, Réaumur, Bonnet, De Geer, Baker, 
and Chabrier, all of whom speak more or less decidedly of 
blood-vessels, currents, moving fluids, pulsations, and circu- 
lation, they proceed in this emphatic manner, crushing, as 
it were, the observations of these worthies under the weight 
of authority,—the authority of Lyonet, Cuvier, and Marcel 
de Serres,—enforced as it is by their own views on this 
important and highly interesting question. 
“But though these arguments, which I have stated in 
their full force, appear strong, and at first sight conclusive, 
those which may be urged for the more modern opinion— 
that no circulation exists in insects, properly so-called— 
appear to have still greater weight. Lyonet, whose piercing 
eyes and skilful hand traced the course of so many hundred 
nerves and bronchie, long after they became invisible to the 
unassisted eye, and which were a thousand times smaller 
than the principal blood-vessels opening into so large an 
organ as the supposed heart of insects might be expected to 
be, could never discover anything like them. His most 
painful researches, and repeated attempts to inject them with 
coloured liquids, were unable to detect the most minute 
opening in the dorsal vessel, or the slightest trace of any 
artery or vein proceeding from or communicating with it. 
And Cuvier, whose unrivalled skill in Comparative Anatomy 
peculiarly qualified him for the investigation, repeated these 
enquiries, and tried all the known modes of injection, with 
equal want of success; and is thus led to the conclusion that 
insects have no circulation; that their dorsal vessel is no 
heart, and therefore ought not to be called by that name; 
and that it is rather a secretory vessel, like many others of 
that kind in those animals.” —‘ Introduction to Entomology, 
vol. iv. p. 91. 
Notwithstanding this very explicit statement of facts and 
K 
