164. Dr. Cutler’s observations on a singular natural production. 
ed, some insects with sticks in their mouths ; so unusual an appearance 
attracted: his attention, and though they appeared to be living animals 
he found them motionless. He has since found them repeatedly in 
the same place, but only in the spring. Fig. 12 represents a specimen 
of this curious production, found at Killingly. Bomare in his Dict. @’ 
Histoire Naturelle, under the article Mouche vegetante, observes, that 
the Clavaria rises from the head, but sometimes from the back of the 
insect, and in either situation gives at first sight an idea of some identity 
of the plant and animal. The article in Bomare is worth reading. 
It is a fact well known to botanists that fungous plants are chief 
ly parasitic and that they attach themselves of preference to certain 
animal or vegetable substances in a state of decay, and it must be 
recollected, that the Clavaria is sucha plant. As this curious pro- 
duction is rare in this cou Tha 
thought it would be proper to take 
some notice of it. It is shee that the boundary between animal and veges — os a 
table bodies is very difficult to define. Their natures approach most _ 
nearly in the lowest and most imperfect individuals of each, as in the 
confervz and some of the vermes ; but a plant of the lowest order, a 
Clayaria, and an animal so elaborately consti las an insect, can never 
be transformed into each other; nature never unites links so immensely, ig 
distant as these; and in order to form correct ideas of any natura 4 
production, we should ever remember, that a 
Nunquam per saltus agit natura. 
