ORTHOPTERA. 



Roesel treats this account with more than merited severity ; not because he could 

 contradict the relation of Piso, but, because he had never observed the same circumstance 

 attend the Wandering Leaf, or Mantis Oratoria, in Europe ;* although he afterwards 

 describes even the first symptom of the transformation as related by Piso When he 

 speaks of the death of the European species, his words are, " As their dissolution 

 approaches, their green eyes become brown, and they unavoidably lose their sight : they 

 remain a long while on the same spot, till at last they fall quite exhausted and powerless, 

 as if asleep.' 1 As to the change after they remained long on the ground, such as sending 

 forth fibres, roots, and stems, from the body of the insect, it is only astonishing such a 

 well-informed naturalist should have deemed it matter of surprise. Could he be ignorant 

 of the many instances that occur, of animal substances producing plants?! or was he not 

 informed that the pupa which commonly sends forth a bee, a wasp, or cicada, has some- 

 times become the nidus of a plant, thrown up stems from the fore part of the head, and 

 changed in every respect into a vegetable, though still retaining the shell and exterior 

 appearance of the parent insect at the root ?J We own at first sight with Roesel that the 

 account of Piso seems" an inattentive and confounded observation," but that an insect 

 may strike root into the earth, and, from the co-operation of heat and moisture, congenial 

 to vegetation, produce a plant of the cryptogamic kind, cannot be disputed. We have 

 seen species of clavaria both of the undivided and branched kinds, four times larger than 

 the insect from which they sprang ; and can we then deny that the insect mentioned by 

 Piso might not produce a plant of a proportionate magnitude? In short, we are not 

 sufficiently acquainted with the productions of Brazil to contradict any of his assertions, 

 concerning this transformation. Piso does not say of what kind this vegetable was ; it 

 must surely be of the fungi kind : reasoning then from analogy, it might be an unknown 

 species of clavaria with numerous and spreading branches ; and, finally, the colour of 



* Among the annotations on the last edition of Roesel's Insecten Belustiguvg we find one relating to this 

 part of the works of Piso. " Der seel Her gelieime Rath Trew, Sfc. Couns. Trew assures Mr. Roesel that 

 Piso not only very often gave out the credible observations of others as his own, but himself believed the most 

 incredible relations, and pretended to be an eye witness thereof." We quote this in justice to the remarks of 

 Roesel. Note in page 10, section Das Wandlende Blat. 



f Such as Mucor crustaceus, &c. 



X Specimens of these vegetated animals are frequently brought from the West Indies ; we have one of the 

 cicada from the pupa, as well as others produced from wasps and bees in the perfect or winged state. Mr. 

 Drury had a beetle in the perfect state, from every part of which small stalks and fibres have sprouted forth; 

 they are very different from the tufts of hair that are observed on a few coleopterous insects, such as the 

 Buprestis fascicularis, of the Cape of Good Hope, and are certainly a vegetable production. 



