The Vegetable or Bulrush Caterpillars. 



Insects having a vegetative process of a similar kind, have been dis- 

 covered in other parts of the world ; and probably when the Flora of 

 each country is more carefully examined, similar instances may be 

 found in each of them. 



At the British Association for the Cultivation of Science, held in 

 August, 1836, a paper was read by Mr. J. B. Yates, ' On the vegeta- 

 ting Wasp,' found in the West Indies, and in which the author like- 

 wise was of opinion that the vegetating process commenced dur- 

 ing the life of the insect ; and the careful examination of these cater- 

 pillars will, I make no doubt, favour this hypothesis, which is now, 

 I believe, very generally the received opinion. 



If these views should be corroborated by future investigations, and 

 found to be correct, the case of these plants and changes produced, 

 will be an instance of a retrograde step in nature, where the insect, 

 instead of rising to the higher order of the butterfly, and soar- 

 ing aloft to the skies, sinks into a plant, and remains attached to the 

 soil in which it buried itself. 



There is some analogy between the mode in which these plants 

 are produced and that of our own missletoe (viscum), which is sup- 

 posed to be propagated by birds, especially the fieldfare and thrush, 

 which feed upon its berries, the seed of which pass through the 

 bowels unchanged, and along with the excrement adhere to the 

 branches of trees, where they vegetate. The missletoe of the oak 

 has, from the time of the ancient Druids, been always preferred to 

 that produced on other trees ; but it is now well known that the 

 viscusquercus differs in no respect from others. 



In former times the Greeks attached many medicinal virtues to this 

 plant, but we learn little concerning its efficacy from the ancient 

 writers on materia medica. It obtained great reputation for the cure 

 of epilepsy ; cases given by Boyle : and Colbach afford several in- 

 stances of its good effects in various convulsive disorders. It acts as 

 a tonic, and is useful in hysteria and other nervous affections. 



