102 Insect Vision and Insect Sleep. 



further material progress was made. The whole of the great 

 discoveries in Egyptian hieroglyphics, in short, took place be- 

 fore another great step in the reading of the wedge-shaped 

 characters of Asia wa§ achieved. 



It was not, in fact, till the magnificent discoveries of Assy- 

 rian remains by Botta, and the subsequent researches of Layard, 

 that Rawlinson, Lassen, Hinks, Norris, and other scholars, aided 

 by recent progress in the knowledge of Sanscrit, Zendic, and 

 other ancient Asiatic dialects, completely mastered the cuneatic 

 characters of the Persian system; the intermediate labours of 

 Millin, Rask, Bournouf, and St. Martin having led to no very 

 material results. 



Even now, the Assyrian and Babylonian forms of the cune- 

 atic systems are but very imperfectly known, although the 

 Persian may be said to be mastered. The earlier forms of 

 cuneatic writing are, in fact, much more complicated, containing 

 as they do a vast number of pictorial and symbolic characters, 

 while the alphabetic or sound- expressing signs form only a sup- 

 plemental part of those earlier systems. They have still also the 

 old determinative signs of the Egyptian system, and are over- 

 loaded with many other incumbrances belonging to the pictorial 

 and symbolic stage of the art of writing, which it will require 

 much time to reduce to order, even after the principles are well 

 understood. Nevertheless, passages of great historical interest 

 have been read off by Rawlinson and other cuneatic scholars, 

 with a very near approach to their general import, though 

 minor details admit of much dispute. But we are on the eve 

 of a final and perfect interpretation of the ancient records of 

 the Asiatic empires ; a result of modern scholarship which may 

 throw new and entirely unexpected light upon the history of 

 those regions. 



INSECT VISION AND INSECT SLEEP* 



i 



BY THE HON. RICHARD HILL. 

 I.— INSECT VISION. 



November 24, 1860. — In setting up in a collection our several 

 crickets, locusts, and grasshoppers, we see that there is a 

 prevailing colour as marked and as intense in the eyes as in the 

 body : thus, locusts are red ; grasshoppers green ; and crickets 

 black ; and their eyes are of similar decided hues. Are we to 



* These notes have appeared in the pages of a journal which circulates only in 

 the island of Jamaica ; the author wishes them to have a wider publicity, and has 

 kindly forwarded them to this work for that purpose. — Eds. 



