APPENDIX. 591 
puncta, scabrities, &c. only. Thus the thorax of an Apion might be foveolate, 
and yet levis ; and if it should chance to be neither, the absence of the former 
character could not at present be expressed without a periphrasis. At present 
we are forced to say haud striatus, canaliculatus, &c., which is contrary to the 
Linnean rule of not using negatives. Would @quatus, in English, even, 
Gen oe eas Me 
“Tam, &e., 
“W,. SPENCE.” 
The following is Mr. Kirby’s answer to the preceding letter :— 
“Barham, November 27th, 1809. 
“ My dear Sir,—I now mean to take my revenge, and show you that I also 
‘can write a long letter, a faculty which, from your late experience, you may 
begin to doubt my possessing. I shall not, however waste my time and yours 
in preliminary matters, but go directly to the unanswered parts of your letters. 
I shall begin with your last, by saying that I admit the validity of your reason- 
ing with respect to Zlium and Zschium, and had on the last made a note in 
pencil, ‘melius trochanter.’ But if this is considered as part of the thigh, 
would not a term be necessary to distinguish what is commonly called the 
thigh ? Perhdps it would be better to consider the trochanter as per se, and so 
arrange coxa, trochanter, femur, one under the other, as primary parts of the 
-Pedes. I cannot look at your letters without wishing I had been with you 
during your examination and dissection of insects, to have taken some of your 
labour off your shoulders. Your success has been answerable to your pains, 
and no small degree of light will be thrown upon Entomology by your disco- 
yeries and observations. I must brush up my memory « little, for I seem to 
have forgot the reference of many of our terms. As I go on with this letter, 
I propose to write the definitions of the terms of our anatomical table, which I 
shall then send to you for your observations. 
“T admit the justice of your observations, that the joint at the base of the 
claw-joint in Cerambyx, &c., is perfectly analogous to that at the base of the 
thigh, but I think neither of them a true trochanter ; which all the joints have 
independent of it. Is this an anomaly, or are we to look upon it (regarding 
the thigh as the tibia, with Dr. Wilmot), as analogous with the fibula? I 
strongly suspect he is correct in this opinion, for though the fibula in large 
animals is parallel with the tibial bone, it seems in other respects to answer to 
this, and in many insects it seems to run in that direction. I have no anato- 
mical book, so I may speak rather incorrectly, for I forget whether the name 
of the bone parallel with the fibula be called tibia or not, Observe —the 
insects that have this anarthrous joint at the base of the claw-joint have no 
onychium or pulyillus, or else an obsolete one. With respect to this term ony- 
chium, I must observe that it is by no means correct, for onychium signifies 
a little claw ; now even in the ZLucanides this little joint is terminated by 
bristles rather than claws, and I believe in the majority of genera it has 
nothing like claws. I am not wedded to pulvillus, which is certainly not 
generally proper, and yet one term ought to distinguish the same part in all 
cases, It seems to me more analogous to the ball of the foot than any other 
part, but planta would generate confusion ; what think you of plantula, its 
diminutive ? Now I am upon the subject of legs, I will observe that the 
part you notice in the anterior tibiw of Zamprima (male) is one of the spinule. 
I don’t recollect whether in answer to your remarks upon antenne, and my 
terms radicle, scape, stalklet, and flagellum, I observed that these were not 
meant to be applied universally to the three first joints, and the whole of 
the rest, but only in eases where they are remarkable, which, I believe, are 
more numerous than you seem to think, for,you will find in most of the 
