KIDD’S OWN JOURNAL. 
INSECT STRENGTH. 
_ 
THE MORE WE STUDY THE INSECT world, the 
more cause do we find for increased admiration. 
The smaller the thing created the greater reason 
is there for us to love the Creator for his goodness 
and wisdom. All who have given attention to the 
subject, must have felt amazed at the comparative 
strength of insects. Baron Haller tells us that in 
great muscular power they appear to excel in pro- 
portion to their diminutiveness. Of this we have a 
remarkable example in the common flea, which can 
draw seventy or eighty times its own weight. The 
muscular strength of this agile creature, enables 
it not only to resist the ordinary pressure of the 
fingers in our endeavors to crush it, but to take 
leaps two hundred times its own length; which 
will appear more surprising, when we consider | 
that a man, to equal the agility ofa flea, would 
have to leap between three and four hundred yards. 
The flea, however, is excelled in leaping by the 
cuckoo-spit, frog-hopper (Tetigonia spumaria, 
Oliver), which will sometimes leap two or three 
yards—that is, more than two hundred and fifty 
times its own length ; as if (to continue the com- 
parison) a man of ordinary height should vault 
through the air to the distance of a quarter of a 
mile. Mouffet, in his “Theatre of Insects,” 
mentions that an English mechanic, named Mark, 
to show his skill, constructed a chain of gold as 
long as his finger, which, together with a lock and 
key, were dragged along by a flea; which could 
draw a golden chariot, to which it was harnessed. 
Bingley tells us, that Mr. Boverich, a watchmaker 
in the Strand, exhibited, some years ago, a little 
ivory chaise with four wheels, and all its proper 
apparatus, and the figure ofa man sitting on the 
box, all of which were drawn by a single flea. 
Tke same mechanic afterwards constructed a lan- 
dau, which opened and shut by springs, with the 
figures of six horses harnessed to it, and of a coach- 
man on the box, a dog between his legs, four per- 
sons inside, two footmen behind it, and a postillion 
riding one of the fore horses, which were all easily 
dragged along by a single flea. 
Goldsmith remarks upon these displays of puli- 
cian strength, that the feats of Sampson would 
not, to a community of fleas, appear to be at all 
miraculous. 
story of another flea, which dragged a silver can- 
non twenty-four times its own weight, mounted on 
wheels, and did not manifest any alarm when this 
was charged with gunpowder and fired off. Pro- 
fessor Bradley, of Cambridge, also mentions a 
remarkable instance of insect strength in a stag- 
beetle (Lucanus Cervus), which he saw carrying 
a wand a foot and ahalf long, and half an inch 
thick, and even flying with it to the distance of 
several yards. 
We may understand the proximate cause of the 
strength of insects, when we look at the prodigious 
number of their muscles—the fleshy belts. or 
ribands by whose means all animal motions are 
performed. The number of these instruments of 
motion in the human body, is reckoned to be about 
five hundred and twenty-nine; but in the cater- 
pular of the goat-moth, Lyonnet counted more 
than seven times as many ; in the head, two hun- 
_dred and twenty-eight ; in the body, one thousand 
six hundred and forty-seven; and around the 
Latreille tells us a no less marvellous | 




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117 
intestines, two thousand one hundred and eighty- 
six ; which, after deducting twenty, common to 
the head and gullet, gives a total of four thousand 
and sixty-one. We put the caterpillar of the 
goat-moth, to which we have before alluded, under 
a bell-glass, which weighed nearly half a pound, 
and of course more than ten times the weight of 
the insect, yet it raised it up with the utmost 
ease. We then placed overthe glass the largest 
book we had at hand—‘ Loudon’s Encyclopzedia 
of Gardening,” consisting of about one thousand 
five hundred pages of strong paper, and weighing 
four pounds ; but thisdid not succeed in prevent- 
ing the escape of the animal, which raised the 
glass, though loaded with the book, nearly a hun- 
dred times its own weight, and made good its 
exit. The multiplicity of its muscles, above enu- 
merated, two hundred and thirty-six of which are 
situated in the legs alone, will enable us to under- 
stand how this extraordinary feat was performed. 
Even this power.of muscle, however, would doubt- 
less have been unavailing in raising the loaded 
glass, except in connexion with two favorable 
circumstances under which the experiment was 
performed, and which are necessary to be borne in 
mind to render the operation credible ; first that the 
wedge-like form of the caterpillar’s head, in con- 
nexion with the peculiar shape of the glass, 
enabled it to lift it ; and second, that one side of 
the glass resting on the table, the insect only bore 
half the weight of the glass and book. 
A peculiar toughness of external covering, 
sometimes supplies the place of this muscular 
power in caterpillars. A singular instance occurs 
in the history of a common downy two-winged fly, 
with grey shoulders and a brown abdomen 
(Hristalis tenax, Fabr.) The grub, which is rat- 
tailed, lives in muddy pools, with the water of 
which it has sometimes been taken up by paper- 
makers, and, though subjected to the immense 
pressure of their machinery, it has survived it in 
a miraculous manner. Since this grub is rather 
soft, it must be the tough texture of skin which 
preserves it, as in the similar instance of the 
caterpillar of the privet hawk-moth (Sphinz 
Ligustri), which Bonnet squeezed under water till 
it was as flat and as empty as the finger of a 
glove, yet within an hour it became as plump and 
lively as if nothing had happened. 
A record of these curious facts will go far, let us 
hope, towards creating a love for the study of 
entomology. ‘The world is full of wonders if we 
would but search them out; and how pure is the 
pleasure afforded by such a search! 
BASHFULNESS, MODESTY, AND PRUDERY. 
Women who are the least bashful are, oftentimes, 
the most modest; and we are never more deceived 
than when we would infer any laxity of principle 
from that freedom of demeanor which often arises 
from a total ignorance of vice. 
Pruprery on the contrary, is often assumed 
rather to keep off the suspicion of criminality, than 
criminality itself. It is resorted to, to defend 
the fair wearer,— not from the whispers of our 
sex, but of her own. Yet is it a cumbersome 
panoply, andaheavy armour. A prudish woman, 
young or old, must ever live detested. Any thing 
that is wnatural, becomes abhorrent. 


