3666 The Zoologist — September, 1873. 



most enthusiastic, the most persevering, the most successful, and 

 the most willing to impart his discoveries to others. I have always 

 considered ray introduction to Dr. Bowerbank one of the most 

 fortunate events of my life, and the hours that I have spent under 

 his tuition as the most delightful and most worthy of remembrance. 

 Let us see what Dr. Bowerbank did with his aquarium. Cuvier's 

 ' Regne Animal' was published in 1824, and contains the following 

 paragraph : — 



" Dans les animaux qui n'ont pas de circulation, notamment dans les 

 insectes, le fluide nourricier baigue toutes les parties; chacune delles y 

 puise les molecules necessaires a son entretien; s'il faut que quelque 

 liquide soit produit, des vaisseaux propres flottent dans le fluide nourricier, 

 et y pompeut, par leur pores, les elements necessaires a la composition de 

 ce liquide." — ' Eegyie Animal,' vol. i. p. 37. 



The English translation renders the passage thus: — 



"In animals that have no circulation, in insects particularly, the parts 

 are all bathed in the nutritive fluid ; each of these parts draws from it 

 what it requires, and if the production of a liquid be necessary, proper 

 vessels floating in the fluid take up by their pores the constituent elements 

 of that fluid." — 'Animal Kingdom,' vol. i. p. 18. 



No sooner had I read this than 1 expressed my dissent from 

 such a doctrine ; I felt certain that insects possessed a circulation. 

 Whether influenced by a desire to bring Cuvier's dictum to the 

 experiinentinn crucis, or from a simple and characteristic thirst 

 for truth, Mr. Bowerbank went into the question heart and soul. 

 Throughout the years 1831 and 1832 he worked hard at the 

 important question whether or no insects possess a circulation : to 

 this end he sallied forth on larva-hunting expeditions with the late 

 Mr. Tully, the celebrated optician, with one of whose excellent 

 instruments his microscopic researches were conducted. " He 

 [Mr. Tully] told me,"^ says Mr. Bowerbank, *' all about these 

 larvae, and where to obtain them, and that they must be kept 

 in the water to which they were accustomed ; so we always adhered 

 to that plan, for we found that if we brought them home in a very- 

 little water, and added a considerable quantity from the house- 

 cistern, the water thus added generally killed nearly all of them ; so 

 I employed a man to take an earthen jar that would hold at least a 

 gallon of the very water in which the larvae were found ; this I 

 poured into the glass prepared for it, putting in a little Conferva 



