MEANS OF DEFENCE OF INSECTS. 



187 



pursuit I am recommending to you. One morning I observed 

 on my study window a little lady-bird yellow with black dots 

 (Coccinella 22- puncta) — "You are very pretty," said I to 

 myself, " and I should like to have a collection of such 

 creatures." Immediately I seized my prey, and not knowing 

 how to destroy it, I immersed it in geneva. After leaving it 

 in this situation a day and a night, and seeing it without 

 motion, I concluded it was dead, and laid it in the sun to dry. 

 It no sooner, however, felt the warmth than it began to move, 

 and afterwards flew away. From this time I began to attend 

 to insects. — The chamaeleon-fly (Stratyomis Chamceleon) was 

 observed by Swammerdam to retain its vital powers after an 

 immersion equally long in spirits of wine. Gcedart affirms 

 that this fly, on which account it was called chamaeleon, will 

 live nine months without food ; a circumstance, if true, more 

 wonderful than what I formerly related to you with respect 

 to one of the aphidivorous flies. 1 — If insects will escape un- 

 hurt from a bath of alcohol, it may be supposed that one of 

 water will be less to be dreaded by them. To this they are 

 often exposed in rainy weather, when ruts and hollows are 

 filled with water : but when the water is dried up, it is seldom 

 that any dead carcasses of insects are to be seen in them] 

 Mr. Curtis submerged the fragile aphides for sixteen hours ; 

 when taken out of the water they immediately showed signs 

 of life, and out of four, three survived the experiment: — an 

 immersion of twenty-four hours, however, proved fatal to 

 them. 2 



The late ingenious, learned, and lamented Dr. Reeve of 

 Norwich, once related to me that he found in a hot fountain 

 on the top of a mountain, near Leuk in the Yalais in Swit- 

 zerland, in which the thermometer stood at 205°, transparent 

 larvae, probably of gnats, or some such insect. — Lord Bute 

 also, in a letter to my late revered friend, the Rev. William 

 Jones of Nayland, imparts a similar observation made by his 

 Lordship at the baths of Abano, near the Euganian moun- 

 tains, on the borders of the Paduan states. They are strong, 

 sulphureous, boiling springs, oozing out of a rocky eminence 



i Bib. Nat. ii. c. 3. 



2 Linn. Trans, vi. 84. 



