445 



modifying the form of different systems of organs. The labours of 

 Mr. Newport have determined, with great exactness, those periods, 

 which had not before been ascertained. 



Among the numerous original observations of Mr. Newport on the 

 arrangement and connexions of the several parts of the nervous 

 system, the description he gives of the origin and distribution of the 

 visceral nerve, which he shows to be analogous to the pneumo- 

 gastric nerve of vertebrated animals, and also of the system of nerves 

 corresponding to those which have been considered as peculiarly 

 subservient to the supply of the respiratory organs, are particularly 

 deserving of notice. In the course of this investigation many new 

 and important facts are brought to light, which had escaped the 

 observation of Lyonet, Miiller, Brandt and Straus-Durkheim. Mr. 

 Newport has also traced a remarkable analogy in the origin and dis- 

 tribution of the two distinct classes of nerves, the one subservient 

 to sensation, and the other to volition, belonging to insects, with 

 those belonging to vertebrated animals, and has thus given greater 

 extension to our views of the uniformity existing in the plans of 

 animal organization than we before possessed, and which are thus 

 made to comprehend the more minute, as well as the larger tribes 

 of the animal creation. 



In a memoir on the Respiration of Insects, more recently commu- 

 nicated to the Society, and of which, at its last meeting in June, the 

 title only could be announced, Mr. Newport has, with great diligence 

 and success, investigated the variations occurring in this function in 

 the different periods of insect developement. He has minutely traced 

 the several changes which the tracheal and spiracles undergo during 

 the transformations of the insect, and has particularly described the 

 successive developement of the air-vesicles in connexion with the 

 power of flight. He has given a minute and accurate description of 

 the system of muscles, both of inspiration and of expiration, of the 

 Sphinx ligustri ; has investigated their various modes of action, with 

 reference more especially to the different classes of nerves appro- 

 priated to these functions ; and has established a distinction in the 

 offices of these nerves, corresponding to the sources from which they 

 derive their origin, and presenting remarkable analogies with similar 

 distinctions in the nerves of vertebrated animals. He has given the 

 result of a series of original experiments on the products of respira- 

 tion in this class of animals, and of their variations under different 

 circumstances of temperature, of submersion, and of confinement in 

 unrespirable and deleterious gases ; and he has deduced important 

 conclusions relative to the circumstances which govern the proper- 

 ties of oxygen consumed and of carbonic acid generated. He has 

 alsocommunicated various results to which he has arrived concerning 

 the capabilities which insects possess of supporting life during 

 longer or shorter periods, when immersed in different media. 



For the original views presented in these two papers, as well as 

 for the mass of valuable information they contain, the results of 

 much laborious and well-directed research in the more difficult de- 

 partments of the Anatomy and Physiology of Insects, prosecuted 



