Entomological Society. 5083 



who is master of that most simple, most commonplace, but most valuable accomplish- 

 ment 'how to observe.' Our Secretary gave me, one day last June, a lady specimen 

 of Dorlhesia Cbaracias: she was evidently in that interesting state in which it is said 

 ' all ladies wish to be who love their lords.' She was confined in a pill-box, without 

 provender, and so was eventually starved to death. Dorthesia Characias — the lady, I 

 know nothing of the gentleman of that name which has been obligingly supplied by 

 Mr. Walker — looks for all the world like a little lump of the very purest and snowyest 

 wedding-cake sugar, cast in a mould that Bernini himself might have designed : the 

 moulds of Dorthesiae are always elegant, but always deliciously incomprehensible ; 

 always cut in open defiance of those little check-strings and chains which entomolo- 

 gists have manufactured as a means of restraining the vagaries of Nature or of fet- 

 tering her to their systems : not only is there no prothorax or mesothorax or metathorax, 

 but there is no thorax at all, — nothing but the little lump of immaculate frosted sugar 

 aforesaid, out of which grow two black antennae and six black legs ; and yet all is per- 

 fect symmetry, the neatest workmanship that can be imagined: one would think that 

 Nature, in her simplicity, had never heard of Leon Dufour or Audouin, De Haan or 

 Strauss- Durckheim, Orismology or Entomology, Comparative or Transcendental 

 Anatomy. What the frosted-sugar-like surface really is I cannot presume to say, but 

 it is thus arranged: first, there is a .series of short lamellations or foliations, which 

 commence close behind the head and reach to the middle of the back ; and these, 

 considered as a whole, constitute a very respectable little larva, not much unlike the 

 larva of a glowworm when two or three days old: close at the end of this series of 

 scales is the anal aperture ; and, as the series itself is only half as long as the insect, 

 it follows that this aperture is exactly in the middle of the back : on each side of the 

 first series of plates are four other plates, not touching each other, but placed at regular 

 distances ; these are small, short and rounded, in fact almost semicircular : beyond 

 these again, on each side, are ten longer plates, symmetrically arranged ; these are 

 soldered together with exquisite exactness, their sides curved, their ends rounded, and 

 each of their connecting sutures having a slightly altered angle, so that, although the 

 first suture is placed transversely to the mesial line of the body, the last is longitudi- 

 nal, and therefore parallel to the mesial line. These various scales or plates constitute 

 a sculptured oval shield of the most elegant design and finish; and, out of respect to 

 entomological usage, I would at once call it the thorax, but then the rest of the body 

 must be the abdomen, and thus the anal aperture, or more properly the external 

 opening of the oviduct, would be placed in the thorax, a situation indeed assigned to 

 it by the illustrious Newport in the case of Stylops, but otherwise unknown throughout 

 the insect world. Well! from beneath this shield, which we may compare to the body 

 of a lady's dress, emerges an ample skirt, having fourteen plates, lamellations or folds, 

 long, longitudinal and parallel : this skirt is about as long as the body, and is entirely 

 posterior to the aforesaid opening of the oviduct. The under side of the insect is not 

 folded or lamellated, but is smooth, tumid, and gradually sloped off towards the end, 

 just like a ship's bottom : it is perfectly undivided, exhibiting not the slightest indica- 

 tion of abdominal segmentation. 



M Now what I am going to narrate may or may not be the economy of the genus, 

 or even of the species ; it was the economy of this individual female: the lady may 

 have been crossed in love, like the oyster of which the same sad liability was discovered 

 by William Shakspere; again, she may have remained permanently and pertinaciously 

 a spinster, like Diana, or like the entomologically-familiar Aphis-mother: in fact one 



