NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 453 
" These curious plants are far from being uncommon. I have 
examined at least a hundred. The natives eat them when fresh, 
and likewise use them, when burnt, as colouring matter for their 
tattooing, rubbing the powder into the wounds, in which state 
it has a strong animal smell. When newly dug up the substance 
of the caterpillar is soft, and when divided longitudinally, the 
intestinal canal is distinctly seen. Most specimens possess the 
legs entire, with the horny part of the head, the mandibles and 
claws. The vegetating process invariably proceeds from the 
nape of the neck, from which it may be inferred that the insect, 
in crawling to the place where it inhumes itself prior to its me- 
tamorphosis, whilst burrowing in the light vegetable soil, gets 
some of the minute seeds of this fungus between the scales of 
its neck, from which in its sickening state it is unable to free 
itself, and which consequently, being nourished by the warmth 
and moisture of the insect's body, then lying in a motionless 
state, vegetate, and not only impede the process of change in the 
chrysalis, but likewise occasion the death of the insect. That 
the vegetating process thus commences during the lifetime of the 
insect, appears certain from the fact of the caterpillar when con- 
verted into a plant, always preserving its perfect form ; in no 
one instance has decomposition appeared to have commenced, or 
the skin to have contracted or expanded beyond its natural size. 
A plant of a similar kind has been discovered growing in abund- 
ance on the banks of the Murrumbidgee, ISTew South Wales, in a 
rich black alluvial soil. 
" It is a curious instance of a retrograde step in nature — an 
insect, instead of rising to the higher order of the butterfly, and 
soaring to the skies, sinks into a plant, and remains attached to 
the soil in which it has buried itself." The name of the insect is 
Hipialus virescens ; the name of the parasitic fungus is Splmria 
Robertsii, 
Lepers, p. 213. — Having asked my friend Professor Erasmus 
Wilson to give me a note as to the leper mentioned by White, 
he has kindly presented me with two handsome volumes con- 
taining his lectures on Dermatology, delivered in the Eoyal Col- 
lege of Surgeons, England, 1871-5. 
In this work there is a very valuable chapter on Leprosy. He 
says : " In the early days the word ' Lepra/ expressive of rough- 
ness, was employed as a generic term to distinguish all cutaneous 
diseases that were not otherwise characterised by ' smoothness,' 
' colour,' or ' magnitude and the Arabian physicians adopted the 
word lepra as the synonym of the disease named by the Greeks 
' elephantiasis ;' hence, at the present time Elephantiasis Grteco- 
