VOL. XLI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 535 



Of a Capricorn Beetle,* Jound alive in a Cavity within a sound piece of Wood, 

 and of the Horn of a Fish struck several Inches into the side of a Ship. By 

 C. Mortimer, M. D. Seer. R. S. N° 461, p. 801. 



About Michaelmas 1 728, Dr. M. went to Portsmouth with some friends, where 

 having taken a view of his majesty's yard and docks for building ships of war; 

 and satisfied his curiosity in examining several ingenious contrivances used in 

 naval architecture; Mr. Bankley, the clerk of the survey, invited him to his house, 

 where he showed him the insect as represented in fig. 1 and 2, pi. 14. The 

 people of the yard were much alarmed at it, none knowing what to make of it, 

 and all imagining it was venomous. On opening the piece of wood, which was 

 tied together with a packthread. Dr. M. found this animal yet alive, and moving in 

 a large cavity in the middle of the wood, which appeared otherwise sound, hav- 

 ing no visible entrance into it. This beetle being turned out on a sheet of 

 paper, crawled about. Mr. Bankley gave the following account of it: " This 

 insect was found August 26, 1728, in splitting a piece of exotic wood into two 

 pieces, cut across the grain 4^ inches thick, taken up in the hold of his ma- 

 jesty's ship Bredah, when in the dock at Portsmouth, after her return from the 

 West Indies: it lived upwards of a month afterwards. The hole in which it 

 was nourished, was 5 inches deep, and 2^ inches by 14- inch broad, in the great 

 piece; 2 inches deep, and 24 inches by 1^ inch broad, in the smaller piece. 

 There was not the least sign of any defect on the outside of the wood, but it 

 appeared very fair and sound ; the inside was porous, having a grain like cedar, 

 but in colour not unlike yellow sanders." 



On examination, Dr.M. found this insect to be a sort of scarabseus called capri- 

 cornus from its long horns; which in this were very much crumpled, and partly 

 broken ofl'' against the wood in its confinement; its wings were likewise crum- 

 pled on the same account. The females of these insects usually lay their eggs 

 in the crevices of the bark of trees; so it is probable, that as soon as this insect 

 was hatched in form of a worm, it gnawed its way through the bark into the 

 wood; and that afterwards the hole it had made in the wood, closed towards 

 the outside; and the worm, still continuing to gnaw deeper, formed the large 

 cavity; and then taking its perfect form of a beetle, remained in that hollows 

 place, where the sap of the tree arising, might have supplied it with nourish- 

 ment, and even air, since it is known, by various experiments, that air will in- 

 sinuate itself whereever such fluids, as contain air in them, can penetrate. 



• This beetle was a species of the Linnaean genus cerambyx, and perhaps the female of cerambt/x 

 (trvicomii. 



