52 RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 



of ganglia or central masses, from whence are given 

 off the branches which convey both sensibility and 

 motion to every part of the body. M. Blanchard, 

 however, discovered in this apparatus a most un- 

 expected degree of complication, and he showed that 

 in certain species these ganglia are very numerous, 

 and that instead of the five or six hitherto observed, 

 there existed nearly thirty of these masses. 



This first memoir by M. Blanchard on the 

 nervous system of the Invertebrata was the means 

 of leading this naturalist to other highly important 

 results. Endowed with a singular steadiness of hand, 

 and an extreme clearness of sight which enabled him to 

 distinguish, without the aid of instruments, the most 

 delicate nervous filaments, he entered upon researches 

 of a similar nature on the nervous system of insects 

 a class of investigations which present such extreme 

 difficulty, that few naturalists have grappled with them. 

 And fortunately his labours were recompensed by 

 the discovery of a complete nervous system, especially 

 distributed to the organs of circulation and respira- 

 tion. This is a very remarkable example of the di- 

 vision of physiological labour, and at the same time 

 a new proof that the more closely we examine these 

 too much neglected beings, the more fully we shall 

 recognise that they possess, in the eyes of the Creator, 

 as high a degree of importance as animals of the 

 largest size. The observations of Lyonnet on the 

 goat-moth, and those of Strauss-Durckheim on the 

 cockchafer *, have shown that the organism is fully 



* M. Strauss-Durckheim, a French zoologist, was one of the 

 first who fully comprehended the importance of Monographs. He 



