502 VHILOSOPHICAI- TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1748. 



work of providing a common covering, but also to keep each other warm, while 

 nature was preparing for the great change, and also to confine some subtil va- 

 pour, issuing from their bodies, which might have been conducive to their revi- 

 viscence, and which had been easily dissipated, had they not lain close, and 

 caught it from each other. 



Between the worm, thus laid up, and the hammoc, in which it was enclosed, 

 a tough and pliant shell, of a dark brown colour, was found. As the worms 

 themselves were of a pretty dark colour, this superficial tincture seems to have 

 been in a great measure purged off into the shell. 



For after the worms had continued in this state during the whole month of 

 June, whether they gnawed their way through the ends of their shells and ham- 

 mocs, or that exit was prepared for them by some corrosive matter oozing from 

 their mouth, he knows not, but they came out almost all in the space of one 

 morning, the most beautiful fly or moth that his eyes ever beheld. Its shape 

 was extremely elegant ; its head, upper wings, body, legs, and antennae, were 

 of the purest white, and glittered as if they were frosted with some shining kind 

 of substance. He rubbed some of this off, and on viewing it through an ordi- 

 nary microscope, it appeared like the points of very minute feathers, or like 

 small cones of polished silver. The upper wings were regularly studded with 

 small, round, black spots, and extended themselves from its head somewhat be- 

 yond its tail. The under wings, which were a little shorter, were of a duskish 

 polour, and prettily fringed at the extremities. 



! This beautiful and surprising work of nature seemed, after its resurrection, to 

 have no dependence on material food. The cornel had recovered a new set of 

 leaves by the time the fly appeared ; but it never touched them ; and those that 

 came out in his room, lived as long there as the rest which enjoyed the open air, 

 and the tree on which they were bred. If they did feed, it must have been on 

 some other adventurer of the air, too minute to be visible to our eyes. Those 

 that were confined to the room discharged a small drop of brown liquor, in which 

 he supposed their eggs were contained ; but as they were not deposited in a pro- 

 per receptacle, they did not produce worms the next year. 

 ,, As to the extraordinary increase of this insect in May 1737, the succession of 

 seven or eight mild winters, which preceded that season, might, by preserving 

 their eggs, give occasion to it. As they are one of the earliest kinds, the exces- 

 sively warm May that year so cftectually hatched their eggs, that they all came 

 to perfection : whereas the more ordinary worms and flies, that make a later ap- 

 pearance, meeting with the sharp easterly winds that happened that summer to 

 blow during the months of July and August, were in a good measure destroyed; 

 otherwise it is possible they too might have had an extraordinary increase. 



