W. H WEEKES, ESQ. 



301 



ment, in which no appearance of insect life had yet been detected. 

 Before removing the open vessel, I had, however, the satisfaction 

 to supply therefrom abundance of living specimens to my scientific 

 friends who had kindly interested themselves on the subject, in 

 various parts of England, Scotland, France, and America. 



3. In the beginning of the month of June, 1844, rather more 

 than two years from the commencement of these operation?, the 

 solution in the close vessel began to manifest signs of a most re- 

 markable change, the results of constant, slow, and almost invisi- 

 ble decomposition. The apparatus was carefully tested, and found, 

 as at first, perfectly air tight, and the confined liquid was evidently 

 returning to a paler red color, as well as a partially translucent 

 condition. These latter appearances rapidly increased, and about 

 the beginning of September in the same year the solution had ac- 

 quired a light amber color and perfect transparency, with abun- 

 dant flakes and scroll-like forms of irregular oxyde of iron of a 

 deep orange color, nearly covering the bottom of the jar. Most of 

 these had, doubtless, been detached in succession from the nega- 

 tive platina spiral, and were conspicuous through the altered 

 solution. It was while engaged in examining this singular accu- 

 mulation of oxyde, by means of an excellent lens, that I saw for 

 the first time an unequivocal proof of the existence of insect life 

 within the close vessel. Several spinous processes of the acari 

 and other remains were detected floating on the surface of the 

 solution, and others attached to the inside of the glass a few linea 

 above the liquid, while, under circumstances somewhat more ob- 

 scure, several -entire dead insects were perceived amidst the flakes 

 resting on the bottom of the jar. An omission — of secondary im- 

 portance, it is true — was now for the first time apparent in the 

 apparatus : this was the want of a fitting shelf or resting-place for 

 the insects ; a circumstance that my kind friend, Andrew Crosse, 

 Esq., when he favored me with a visit a few weeks after, remarked 

 almost immediately, and said, before he knew that acari had 

 already appeared, " that they would fall in and be drowned almost 

 as fast as tb,sy were produced " Mr. Crosse was right in his con- 

 jecture, for although 1 have latterly watched the proceeding with 

 diurnal care, I have never identified the presence of more than two 

 living issects at the same time within the close apparatus, and 

 these have as speedily as invariably shared the fate of their pred 

 ecessors. Notwithstanding the omission alluded to, I enjoy an 

 increase of satisfaction in the knowledge that I have kept from my 

 arrangements any substance wfHch by its introduction might have 

 been suspected of vitiating the results, while the main object of 

 the undertaking has in no wise suffered in its accomplishment. I 

 have only to add my belief, founded on considerable experience 

 and much observation, that insect life was first developed in this 

 division of my experiment some time in the month of July, 1844, 

 about two years and two months from the commencement. 



I am, dear sir^yours faithfully, 

 V W. H. Weekes 



Sandwich, 2d Sept., 1845. 

 To the Jiuthor of " Vestige of the Natural History of Creation. 99 



