YOL. IV.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. SGQ 



form of the aurelia or chrysalis, divesting itself of its coat in the space of I 

 min. 10 sec. the manner of which he very curiously describes, having atten- 

 tively beheld it himself. He adds, how the wings and other parts are formed 

 for the papilio or butterfly, and how indeed the wings are latitant under the 

 second and third ring of the worm, before it works the bag. 



Of the aurelia he describes its shape and all the parts, and particularly the 

 remaining vestiges of the silky intestines, the ventricle, and the concrete mel- 

 leous juice therein, together with some though rare and scarce perceptible mo- 

 tion of the heart. Then, how the aurelia changes into a butterfly, and in 

 what time, viz. in the space of ten days in summer, and in a month's time in 

 autumn and winter. Where he adds, how the eggs begin in the females upon 

 their change into aurelias, and how at last the butterfly breaks out by means of 

 its claws and a sharp liquor. 



To this he subjoins a particular description of the form of the butterfly, 

 and all its parts; of the motion of its heart, of the discriminative marks 

 between the male and female; of the curious structure of the ovarium; the 

 parts of generation, the coitus, and the strange length of the time it lasts, the 

 male beating his wings about 130 times in one copulation, the multitude of 

 eggs, amounting to 300, 400, sometimes 500; and the death of the poor fly, 

 following five days after tlie coitus in summer, but not before the 12th day in 

 August. 



He omits not to instruct the reader of the ways of keeping the eggs, and tlie 

 manner of ordering them for hatching ; where he takes notice of one kind of 

 butterfly in Sicily, which is made twice fecund in one year, viz. in the end of 

 April and the end of August. 



He concludes with the way of winding off the bags, and informs us how 

 many threads together will make good substantial silk; where he afiirms, that 

 sometimes he has reckoned 930 Bononian feet of silk wound off from one bag, 

 without the exterior lanugo and the inmost last part, which both together might 

 make a fourth part of that length more. 



II. Description Anatomique d'un Cameleon, d'un Castor, d'un Dromedaire, 

 d'un Ours, et d'une Gazelle. A Paris, 1669, in 4to. 



The dissections of these animals and the observations thereon were made in 

 the royal library at Paris. 



Of the chamelion* (which they say was an Egj^ptian one;) they allege that 

 there are two other sorts, one of Arabia, and another of Mexico, and obser\e : 

 1 . That its contrary motions of swelling and contracting are not made as in other 



* Lacerta chamaeleon. Liiuu 

 VOL. I. 3 A 



