180 INSECT TRANSFORMATIONS. 



Sir Joseph Banks and the emperor-butterfly. To 

 all such flippant wit we have merely to retort the 

 question of the Abbe de la Pluche, ' if the Deity 

 thought insects worthy of his divine skill in form- 

 ingj thcto, ought we to consider them beneath our 

 notice?'* 



Mouffet, in his Theatre of Insects,"]" mentions that 

 an English mechanic, named Mark, to show his skill, 

 constructed a chain of gold as long as his finger, 

 which, together with a lock and key, were dragged 

 along by a flea; and he had heard of another flea 

 which could draw a golden chariot, to which it was 

 harnessed. Bingley tells us that Mr Boverich, a 

 watchmaker in the Strand, exhibited some years ago 

 a little ivory chaise with four wheels, and all its 

 proper apparatus, and the figure of a man sitting on 

 the box, all of which were drawn by a single flea. 

 The same mechanic afterwards constructed a minute 

 landau, which opened and shut by springs, with 

 the figures of six horses harnessed to it, and of a 

 coachman on the box, a dog between his legs, four 

 persons inside, two footmen behind it, and a postilion 

 riding on one of the fore horses, which were all 

 easily dragged along by a single flea. J Gold- 

 smith remarks upon these displays of pulician 

 strength, that the feats of Samson would not, to a 

 community of fleas, appear to be at all miraculous.^ 

 Latreille tells us a no less marvellous story of 

 another flea, which dragged a silver cannon twenty- 

 fuur times its own weight, mounted on wheels, and 

 did not manifest any alarm when this was charged 

 with gunpowder and fired off.|| Professor Bradley, 

 of Cambridge, also mentions a remarkable instance 

 .of insect strength in a stag-beetle {Liicanus Ccrvtis) 



* Spectacle de la Nature, i, 3. + Page 275. 



$ Animal Biography, iii, 468. v Aniiiiatetl Nature, iv, 178. 

 )| Nouv. Diet. (I'llist. IVat. xxviii, 249. 



