.'i')2 Plot". A. M. Mavei's Ewperiment.^ on the supposed 



lives. The want of appirciation of these relations, together 

 with the tact that many iiaturaHsts are more desirous to de- 

 scribe manv new forms than to ascertain the function of one 

 well-kiunvn form whicli may exist in all animals of a class, 

 has tended to keep many departments of natural history iu the 

 condition of mere descriptive science. Those who are not pro- 

 fessed naturalists appreciate this perhaps more than the na- 

 turalists themselves, who are imbucil with that enthusiasm 

 which alwavs comes with the earnest study of any one de|)art- 

 ujcnt of nature ; for the perusal of those loni; and laboriously 

 precise descriptions of forms of organs without the slightest 

 attempt, or even suggestion, as to their uses, affects a physi- 

 cist with feelings analogous to those experienced by one who 

 peruses a well-classitied catalogue descriptive of physical in- 

 struments while of the uses of these instruments lie is utterly 

 ignorant. 



The following views, taken from the 'Anatomy of the luver- 

 tebrata ' by C. Th. v. Siebold, will show how various are the 

 opinions of naturalists as to the location and form of the organs 

 of hearing in the Insecta : — " There is the same uncertainty 

 concerning the organs of audition [as concerning the olfactory 

 organs]. Experience having long shown that most insects per- 

 ceive sounds, this sense has been loeateil sometimes in this and 

 sometimes in that organ. But iu their opinion it often seems 

 to have been forgotten, or unthought of, that there can be no 

 auilitory organ without a special auditory nerve which connects 

 du-ectly with an acoustic apparatus ca|)able of receiving, con- 

 ducting, and concentrating the sonorous undulations. (^Tlie 

 author who has erred most widely in this respect is Mr. L. W. 

 Clarke in Mag. Nat. Hist., September 1838, who has described 

 at the base of the antennae of Carabus nemundis, Ulig., an audi- 

 tive apparatus composed of an auricula, a meatus auditorius 

 externus and internus, a tympanum and labyriuthus, of all of 

 which there is not the least trace. The two white convex spots 

 at the base of the antenmc of Bhittu urientalis, ami which Tre- 

 viranus has described as auditory organs, are, as JUirmeister has 

 correctly stated, only rudimentary accessory eyes. Newport and 

 Goureau think that the antennie serve both as tactile and as 

 auditory organs. But this view is inadmissible, as Erichson 

 has already stated, except in the sense that tiie antenna^, like all 

 solid bodies, may conduct sonorous vibrations of the air ; but 

 even admitting this view, where is the auditory nerve "r for it is 

 nut at all supposable that the antennal nerve can serve at the 

 same time the function of two distinct senses.) 



" Certain Orthoplera are the only Insecta with which there 



