144 
Ohservations on the various Insects 
them more than once in my morning walks. I was very desirous 
of seeing the eggs pass through the vagina, but my first attempts 
were unsuccessful : at length I was gratified with this pleasing 
spectacle. I gathered an ear upon which some of the Tipulce 
were busy, and held it so as to let a sunbeam fall upon one of 
them, examining its operations under the three glasses of a pocket 
microscope : I could then very distinctly perceive the eggs passing 
one after another, like minute air-bubbles, through the vagina, 
the aculeus being wholly inserted into the floret. I examined this 
process for full ten minutes before the patient little animal dis- 
engaged itself, and at last it was through mv violence that she 
discontinued her employment, and new away. 
" On the 7th of June, upon opening a floret I discovered a 
small patch of eggs ; they were oblong, transparent, and of a pale 
buff colour. I afterwards found several of these little patches, 
containing from a single egg only to more than twenty. On the 
17th I found for the first time a larva newly hatched: it adhered 
to the lower end of one of the anthers (fig. 14), and was perfectly 
transparent and colourless ; from which circumstance I conjecture 
that it had taken no food. I afterwards detected two more in a 
similar situation, one of which had become straw-coloured from 
the contrary cause. In anotlier floret, upon the same day, I found 
many with their heads immersed in the woolly summit of the 
germen : some were in the interior valvule of the corolla; others 
appeared to be busy upon the plumose stigmata, upon which I did 
not observe that any pollen had been discharged from the anthers. 
On the 22nd I obsen'ed that the lanae were usually in the 
situation represented in the accurate drawing engraved in the 
third volume of the Linnsean Society's Traasactions (fig. 10). AU 
circumstances considered, it seems to me most probable that these 
animals do not feed upon the pollen before it is discharged from 
the anthers (except perhaps when they are newly hatched ) ; yet one 
would think that in this case sufficient must escape them to fertilize 
the germen. How they prevent tliis I can but conjecture ; as their 
heads are often immersed in the stigmata and in the down observ- 
able upon the top of the germen, it is possible they may occasion 
an obstinction in those fine ducts through which the I'ertilizing 
principle passes down into the grain ; or they may consume that 
spermatic moisture upon the stigma, without the aid of which the 
pollen cannot perform its office. On the 29th the parent Tiptilce 
had all disappeared, and soon after this period my investigations 
were stopped bv illness ; but as I had brought them down so far 
as to connect them with those made last year, this interruption 
was of less consequence." 
M. Herpin is of opinion that it is an inhabitant of France. He 
says, " I have also found in ears of corn at the time of flowering 
