PARTS OF INSECTS, AND MISCELLANEOUS OBJECTS. 



131 



of a number of tubular joints, so as to admit of motion in all necessary direc 

 tions. The office of these organs is not yet thoroughly understood. Many ceJe- 

 brated naturalists consider them merely as feelers, that serve to guide the move 

 ments of the insect ; while others, no less distinguished, consider this office as 

 but secondary, and that the primary use of the antennae is to enable the insect 

 to detect sounds that they are in truth organs of hearing. The forms of the 

 antennae are extremely various, and many of them are quite elegant arid beau 

 tiful. In cut 223, a few only of these organs are delineated ; one, that of 



Fig. 223. 



the common cockchaffer, is seen expanded like a hand with seven fingers ; 

 another exhibits the form of a graceful plume, and a third bears some resem 

 blance to a feather. A fourth variety is thick and bushy, like the tail of a cat ; 

 some are fringed with slender arched branches, and others exhibit the form of a 

 string of delicate beads studded with minute tufts of hair. Doubtless the great 

 diversity, in form and structure, which obtains in these singular organs is needed 

 for the well-being and enjoyment of the different little creatures to which they be 

 long : each change in form, size, and figure, or in any other particular, being 

 subservient to some wise and benevolent purpose ; and vrere we but able to ex 

 plore the whole field of research, we should be enabled to trace the hand of Di 

 vinity in every minute modification. 



SCALES OF FISHES. The scales of fishes furnish a great variety of beautiful 

 objects for the microscope ; their figures being often extremely elegant, and pre 

 senting a rich diversity of forms. For not only are different fishes possessed of 

 different shaped scales, but those that belong to the same fish vary in structure, 

 according as they are found on one or another part of the body. Leuwenhoeck 

 supposed that each scale was composed of a vast number of minute scales, in rows, 

 one layer overlapping another, the largest being next to the fish, and the rest 

 gradually diminishing in size ; thus forming successive strata from the base to 

 the upper edge of the scale. In some scales, when viewed by the microscope, a 



