92 THE PHILOSOPHY 



found In waters, and others frequent houfes, among which, though 

 it wants wings, is the bed-bug, a pefliferous infeft, which is too well 

 known, and too generally diffufed. The bugs differ from other in- 

 feds by their foftnefs; and moft of them emit a very foetid fmell. — 

 The aphis ^fuceroti, or njine-fretter : Thefe infeds are very common, 

 and are generally termed the lice of the plants which they infeft : 

 The puceron, as remarked in the firfl; chapter, is viviparous in 

 fummer, and oviparous in autumn. Numbers of them are devoured 

 by the ants, on account, as is fuppofed, of a fweet liquor with which 

 their bodies are perpetually moiftened. — Chennes : The larvae or 

 caterpillars of this infedl have fix feet, and are generally covered 

 with a hairy or woolly fubftance. The winged infeds leap or 

 fpring with great agility, and Infeft a number of different trees and 

 plants : The females, by means of a tube at the termination of their 

 bodies, infert their eggs under the furface of the leaves, and the 

 worms, when hatched, give rife to thofe tubercles, or galls, with 

 which the leaves of the afh, the fir, and other trees, are fometimes 

 almoft entirely covered. 



The third order or tribe of four-winged infeds confifts of three 

 genera only. But the fpecies comprehended under them are ex- 

 ceedingly numerous. All butterflies and moths belong to this 

 order. Their wings are covered with a farinaceous powder, or ra- 

 ther with a kind of fcales or feathers, difpofed in regular rows, near- 

 ly in the fame manner as tiles are laid upon the roofs of houfes. 

 The elegance, the beauty, the variety of colours exhibited in their 

 wings, are produced by the dil'pofition and different tindures of 

 thefe minute feathers. The infeds of this order, on account of their 

 beauty and eafy prefervation, have always been the favourites of 

 colledors, and particularly of thofe of the female fex. "When the 

 feathers are rubbed off, the wings appear to be nothing more than a 



3 naked, 



